PR 

188*1 




Pass, /K- 
Book__ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 






s 




Copyright, 1885, 

tv IIaki-ki: & liROTHKRS 



April 8, 1887 



Subscription Price 
per Year, 52 Numbers, f IS 



Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter 



(£itglisl) Men of Cetters 

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 



GOLDSMITH 



BY 



WILLIAM BLAC 



I 887 



Booh, you may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all 

Dn. Johnson 



NEW YORK 

HARPER k BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

1887 



HARPER'S HANDY SERIES. 

Latest Issues. 

N0 : ' CKNT8. 

89. A Playwright's Daughter. A Novel. By Annie Edwardes. 25 

90. Our Radicals. A Tale of Love and Politics. By Fred Burnabv. 25 

91. A Wicked Girl. A Novel. By Mary Cecil Hay .', 25 

9 2. The Long Lane. A Novel. By Ethel Coxon 25 

93. Francis. A Socialistic Romance. By M. Dal Vero 25 

94. Baptized with a Curse. A Novel. By Edith S. Drewrv. . . . 25 

95. Comediettas and Farces. By John Maddison Morton ..*.... 25 

96. Marcella Grace. An Irish Novel. By Rosa Mulholland 25 

97. The Phantom City. A Volcanic Romance. By William WestaU. '25 

98. Joan Wentworth. A Novel. By Katharine S. Macquoid. ... 25 

99. A Voyage to the Cape. By W. Clark Russell 25 

100. In Scorn of Consequence; or, My Brother's Keeper. A Novel. 

By Theodora Corrie 25 

101. The Chaplain's Craze. A Novel. By G. Manville Fenn 25 

102. Between Two Loves. A Tale of the West Riding. By Amelia 

E. Barr 25 

103. That Winter Night; or, Love's Victory. A Novel, liy 

Robert Buchanan 25 

104. The Bright Star of Life. A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon 25 

105. The Guilty River. A Novel. By Wilkie Collins 25 

106. Golden Bells. A Peal in Seven Changes. By R. E. Francillon. 25 

107. The Nine of Hearts. A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon 25 

108. A Modern Telemachus. A Novel. By Charlotte M. Yonge. . . 25 

109. Cashel Byron's Profession. A Novel. By George Bernard 

Shaw 25 

110. Britta. A Shetland Romance. By George Temple. Illustrated. 25 

1 11. A Child of the Revolution. A Novel. By the Author of " The 

Atelier du Lys." Illustrated 25 

112. A Strange Inheritance. A Novel. By F. M. F. Skene 25 

113. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, Etc. By Alfred, Lord 

Tennyson 25 

114. Regimental Legends. By John Strange Winter 25 

115. Yeast. A Problem. By Charles Kingsley 25 

116. Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskell 25 

117. Lucy Crofton. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant 25 

118. Mignon's Secret, and Wanted — A Wife. By John Strange 

Winter ; 25 

119. Samuel Johnson. By Leslie Stephen 25 

120. Edward Gibbon. By James Cotter Morison 25 

121. Sir Walter Scott. By Richard H. Hutton 25 

122. Shelley. By John A. Symonds 25 

123. Hume. By Professor Huxley 25 

124. Goldsmith. By William Black 15 

Other volumes, in preparation. 

1&- Harpbb & Brotmkrs tvill send any of the above works by mail, postage pre- 
paid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 



f3i 



<&\\%\\s\) iiten of Cetters 

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 



GOLDSMITH 



BY 



WILLIAM BLACK 




NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN SQUARE 



ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS, 

Edited by John Morley. 



Johnson Leslie Stephen. 

Gibbon J. C. Morison. 

Scott R. H. Hutton. 

Shelley J. A. Symonds. 

Hume T. H. Huxley. 

Goldsmith William Black. 

Defoe William Minto. 

Burns J. C. Shairp. 

Spenser R. W. Church. 

Thackeray Anthony Trollope. 

Burke John Morley. 

Milton Mark Pattison. 

Hawthorne Henry James, Jr. 

Southey E. Dowden. 

Chaucer A. W. Ward. 

Bunyan... J. A. Froude. 

Cowper Goldwin Smith. 

Pope Leslie Stephen. 

Sir Philip Sidney 



Byron John Nichol. 

Locke Thomas Fowler. 

Wordsworth F. Myers. 

Dryden G. Saintsbury. 

Landor Sidney Colvin. 

De Quincey David Masson. 

Lamb Alfred Ainger. 

Bentley R. C. Jebb. 

Dickens A. W. Ward. 

Gray E. W. Gosse. 

Swift Leslie Stephen. 

Sterne H. D. Traill. 

Macaulay J. Cotter Morison. 

Fielding Austin Dobson. 

Sheridan Mrs. Oliphant. 

Addison W. J. Courthope. 

Bacon R. W. Church. 

Coleridge H. D. Traill. 



i2ino, Cloth,. 75 cents per volume. 



J. A. Symonds. 



\ 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

83?" A ny oftJte above works -will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part 
of the United States^ on receipt of the price. 



I 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

TAOK 

INTRODUCTORY 1 



CHAPTER II. 

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE .... 6 



CHAPTER III. 

IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEI 13 

i 



CHAPTER IV. 

EARLY STRUGGLES. — HACK-WRITING 20 

CHAPTER V. 

BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP. — THE BEE 30 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

PERSONAL TRAITS 40 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. — BEAU NASH 46 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ARREST 62 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE TRAVELLER 70 

CHAPTER X. 

MISCELLANEOUS WRITING 76 

CHAPTER XL 

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD HI 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN i>4 

CHAPTER XIII. 

GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY 10:? 



CONTENTS. vii 

CHAPTER XIV. 

PAQK 

THE DESERTED VILLAGE 113 

CHAPTER XV. 

OCCASIONAL WRITINGS 126 

CHAPTER XVI. 

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 133 

CHAPTER XVII. 

INCREASING DIFFICULTIES. — THE END 142 



GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY 



" Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream 
of life is wisdom." So wrote Oliver Goldsmith ; and 
surely among those who have earned the world's gratitude 
by this ministration he must be accorded a conspicuous 
place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly 
avoids the darker problems of existence — if the mystery 
of the tragic and apparently unmerited and unrequited 
suffering in the world is rarely touched upon — we can par- 
don the omission for the sake of the gentle optimism that 
would rather look on the kindly side of life. " You 
come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet 
minstrel sings to you," says Mr. Thackeray. " Who 
could harm the kind vagrant harper ? Whom did he ever 
hurt ? He carries no weapon save the harp on which he 
plays to you ; and with which he delights great and hum- 
ble, young and old, the captains in the tents, or the sol- 
diers round the fire, or the women and children in the 
villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple 
songs of love and beauty. ' ' And it is to be suspected 
1* 



2 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

— it is to be hoped, at least — that the cheerfulness which 
shines like sunlight through Goldsmith's writings, did not 
altogether desert himself even in the most trying hours of 
his wayward and troubled career. He had, with all his 
sensitiveness, a fine happy-go-lucky disposition ; was 
ready for a frolic when he had a guinea, and, when he had 
none, could turn a sentence on the humorous side of star- 
vation ; and certainly never attributed to the injustice or 
neglect of society misfortunes the origin of which lay 
nearer home. 

Of course, a very dark picture might be drawn of Gold- 
smith's life ; and the sufferings that he undoubtedly en- 
dured have been made a whip with which to lash the in- 
gratitude of a world not too quick to recognize the claims 
of genius. He has been put before us, without any 
brighter lights to the picture, as the most unfortunate of 
poor devils ; the heart-broken usher ; the hack ground 
down by sordid booksellers ; the starving occupant of 
successive garrets. This is the aspect of Goldsmith's 
career which naturally attracts Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster 
seems to have been haunted throughout his life by the 
idea that Providence had some especial spite against liter- 
ary persons ; and that, in a measure to compensate them 
for their sad lot, society should be very kind to them, 
while the Government of the day might make them Com- 
panions of the Bath or give them posts in the Civil Ser- 
vice. In the otherwise copious, thorough, and valuable 
Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, we find an almost 
humiliating insistance on the complaint that Oliver Gold- 
smith did not receive greater recognition and larger sums 
of money from his contemporaries. Goldsmith is here 
" the poor neglected sizar ;" his " marked ill-fortune" 
attends him constantly ; he shares " the evil destinies of 



I.] INTRODUCTION. 3 

men of letters ;" lie was mic of those who " struggled 
into fame without the aid of English institutions ;" in 
short, "he wrote, and paid the penalty." Nay, even 
Christianity itself is impeached on account of the perse- 
cution suffered by poor Goldsmith. " There had been a 
Christian religion extant for seventeen hundred and fifty- 
seven years," writes Mr. Forster, " the world having 
been acquainted, for even so long, with its spiritual neces- 
sities and responsibilities ; yet here, in the middle of the 
eighteenth century, was the eminence ordinarily conceded 
to a spiritual teacher, to one of those men who come 
upon the earth to lift their fellow-men above its miry 
ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he cannot 
get, and dunned for a milk-score he cannot pay. ' ' That 
Christianity might have been worse employed than in 
paying the milkman's score is true enough, for then the 
milkman would have come by his own ; but that Chris- 
tianity, or the state, or society should be scolded because 
an author suffers the natural consequences of his allowing 
his expenditure to exceed his income, seems a little hard. 
And this is a sort of writing that is peculiarly inappropri- 
ate in the case of Goldsmith, who, if ever any man was 
author of his own misfortunes, may fairly have the charo-e 
brought against him. " Men of genius," says Mr. Fors- 
ter, " can more easily starve, than the world, with safety 
to itself, can continue to neglect and starve them." Per- 
haps so ; but the English nation, which has always had 
a regard and even love for Oliver Goldsmith, that is quite 
peculiar in the history of literature, and which has been 
glad to overlook his faults and follies, and eager to sym- 
pathize with him in the many miseries of his career, will 
be slow to believe that it is responsible for any starvation 
that Goldsmith may have endured. 



4 GOLDSMITH. [chap 

However, the key-note lias l>een firmly struck, and it 
still vibrates. Goldsmith was the unluckiest of mortals, 
the hapless victim of circumstances. ' ' Yielding to that 
united pressure of labor, penury, and sorrow, with a frame 
exhausted by unremitting and ill-rewarded drudgery, 
Goldsmith was indebted to the forbearance of creditors 
for a peaceful burial." But what, now, if some for- 
eigner strange to the traditions of English literature — 
some Japanese student, for example, or the New Zea- 
lander come before his time — were to go over the ascer- 
tained facts of Goldsmith's life, and were suddenly to 
announce to us, with the happy audacity of ignorance, 
that he, Goldsmith, was a quite exceptionally fortunate 
person ? " Why," he might say, " I find that in a 
country where the vast majority of people are born to 
labor, Oliver Goldsmith was never asked to do a stroke 
of work towards the earning of his own living until he 
had arrived at man's estate. All that was expected of 
him, as a youth and as a young man, was that he should 
equip himself fully for the battle of life. He was main- 
tained at college until he had taken his degree. Again 
and again he was furnished with funds for further study 
and foreign travel ; and again and again he gambled his 
opportunities away. The constant kindness of his uncle 
only made him the best begging-letter-writer the world 
has seen. In the midst of his debt and distress as a 
bookseller's drudge, he receives £400 for three nights' 
performance of the The Good-Natured Man ; he imme- 
diately purchases chambers in Brick Court for £400 ; 
and forthwith begins to borrow as before. It is true 
that he died owing £2000, and was indebted to the for- 
bearance of creditors for a peaceful burial ; but it ap- 
pears that during the last seven years of his life he had 



t.J [NTRODUCTION. 5 

been earning an annual income equivalent to £800 of 
English currency. ' He was a man liberally and affection- 
ately brought up, who - had many relatives and many 
friends, and who had the proud satisfaction — which has 
been denied to many men of genius — of knowing for 
years before he died that his merits as a writer had been 
recognized by the great bulk of his countrymen. And 
yet this strange English nation is inclined to suspect that 
it treated him rather badly ; and Christianity is attacked 
because it did not pay Goldsmith's milk-score." 

Our Japanese friend may be exaggerating ; but his 
position is, after all, fairly tenable. It may at least be 
looked at, before entering on the following brief resume 
of the leading facts in Goldsmith's life, if only to restore 
our equanimity. For, naturally, it is not pleasant to 
think that any previous generation, however neglectful 
of the claims of literary persons (as compared with the 
claims of such wretched creatures as physicians, men of 
science, artists, engineers, and so forth) should so 
cruelly have ill-treated one whom we all love now. This 
inheritance of ingratitude is more than we can bear. Is 
it true that Goldsmith was so harshly dealt with by those 
barbarian ancestors of ours ? 

1 The calculation is Lord Macaulay's : see his Biographical 



CHAPTER II. 



SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. 



The Goldsmiths were of English descent ; Goldsmith's 
father was a Protestant clergyman in a poor little village 
in the county of Longford ; and when Oliver, one of 
several children, was born in this village of Pallas, or 
Pallasmore, on the 10th November, 1728, the Rev. 
Charles Goldsmith was passing rich on £40 a year. But 
a couple of years later Mr. Goldsmith succeeded to a 
more lucrative living ; and forthwith removed his family 
to the village of Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath. 

Here at once our interest in the story begins : is this 
Lissoy the sweet Auburn that we have known and loved 
since our childhood ? Lord Macaulay, with a great deal 
of vehemence, avers that it is not ; that there never was 
any such hamlet as Auburn in Ireland ; that The De- 
serted Village is a hopelessly incongruous poem ; and 
that Goldsmith, in combining a description of a probably 
Kentish village with a description of an Irish ejectment, 
" has produced something which never was, and never 
will be, seen in any part of the world. ' ' This criticism 
is ingenious and plausible, but it is unsound, for it hap- 
pens to overlook one of the radical facts of human nature 
— the magnifying delight of the mind in what is long 
remembered and remote. What was it Hint the imagina- 



,,.| SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. 7 

tion of Goldsmith, in his life-long banishment, could not 
see when he looked back to the home of his childhood, 
and his early friends, and the sports and occupations of 
his youth ? Lissoy was no doubt a poor enough Irish vil- 
lage ; and perhaps the farms were not too well culti- 
vated ; and. perhaps the village preacher, who was so dear 
to all the country round, had to administer many a 
thrashing to a certain graceless son of his ; and perhaps 
Paddy Byrne was something of a pedant ; and no doubt 
pigs ran over the ' ' nicely sanded floor' ' of the inn ; and 
no doubt the village statesmen occasionally indulged in a 
free fight. But do you think that was the Lissoy that 
Goldsmith thought of in his dreary lodgings in Fleet- 
street courts ? No. It was the Lissoy where the 
vagrant lad had first seen the " primrose peep beneath 
the thorn ;" where he had listened to the mysterious call 
of the bittern by the unfrequented river ; it was a Lissoy 
still ringing with the glad laughter of young people in the 
twilight hours ; it was a Lissoy forever beautiful, and 
tender, and far away. The grown-up Goldsmith had not 
to go to any Kentish village for a model ; the familiar 
scenes of his youth, regarded with all the wistfulness and 
longing of an exile, became glorified enough. " If I go 
to the opera where Signora Colomba pours out all the 
mazes of melody," he writes to Mr. Hodson, " I sit and 
sigh for Lissoy 's fireside, and Johnny Armstrong'' s Last 
Good Night from Peggy Golden." 

There was but little in the circumstances of Gold- 
smith's early life likely to fit him for, or to lead him 
into, a literary career ; in fact, he did not take to litera- 
ture until he had tried pretty nearly every thing else as a 
method of earning a living. If he was intended for any 
thins:, it was no doubl his father's wish that he should 



8 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

enter the Church ; and he got such education as the poor 
Irish clergyman — who was not a very provident person — 
could afford. The child Goldsmith was first of all taught 
his alphabet at home, by a maid-servant, who was also a 
relation of the family ; then, at the age of six, he was 
sent to that village school which, with its profound and 
learned master, he has made familiar to all of us ; and 
after that he was sent further a-field for his learning, 
being moved from this to the other boarding-school as 
the occasion demanded. Goldsmith's school -life could 
not have been altogether a pleasant time for him. We 
hear, indeed, of his being concerned in a good many 
frolics — robbing orchards, and the like ; and it is said 
that he attained proficiency in the game of fives. But a 
shy and sensitive lad like Goldsmith, who was eagerly 
desirous of being thought well of, and whose appearance 
only invited the thoughtless but cruel ridicule of his 
schoolmates, must have suffered a good deal. He was 
little, pitted with the small-pox, and awkward ; and 
schoolboys are amazingly frank. He was not strong 
enough to thrash them into respect of him ; he had no 
big brother to become his champion ; his pocket-money 
was not lavish enough to enable him to buy over enemies 
or subsidize allies. 

In similar circumstances it has sometimes happened 
that a boy physically inferior to his companions has con- 
soled himself by proving his mental prowess — has scored 
off his failure at cricket by the taking of prizes, and has 
revenged himself for a drubbing by writing a lampoon. 
But even this last resource was not open to Goldsmith. 
He was a dull boy ; "a stupid, heavy blockhead," is 
Dr. Strean's phrase in summing up the estimate formed 
of young Goldsmith by his contemporaries at school. 



ii. j SCHOOL AM) COLLEGE. 9 

( )f course, as soon as lie became famous, everybody 
began to hunt up recollections of his having said or done, 
this or that, in order to prove that there were signs of 
the coming greatness. People began to remember that 
he had been suspected of scribbling verses, which he 
burned. What schoolboy has not done the like ?f We 
know how the biographers of great painters point out to 
us that their hero early showed the bent of his mind by 
drawing the figures of animals on doors and walls with a 
piece of chalk ; as to which it may be observed that, if 
every schoolboy who scribbled verses and sketched in 
chalk on a brick wall were to grow up a genius, poems 
and pictures would be plentiful enough. However, there 
is the apparently authenticated anecdote of young Gold- 
smith's turning the tables on the fiddler at his uncle's 
dancing-party. The fiddler, struck by the odd look of 
the boy who was capering about the room, called out 
"^Esop !" whereupon Goldsmith is said to have in- 
stantly replied, 

"Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, 
See iEsop dancing and his monkey playing; !" 

But even if this story be true, it is worth nothing as an 
augury ; for quickness of repartee was precisely the 
accomplishment which the adult Goldsmith conspicuously 
lacked. Put a pen into his hand, and shut him up in 
a room : then he was master of the situation — nothing 
could be more incisive, polished, and easy than his play- 
ful sarcasm. But in society any fool could get the better 
of him by a sudden question followed by a horse-laugh. 
All through his life — even after he had become one of 
the most famous of living writers — Goldsmith suffered 
from want of self-confidence. He was too anxious to 
please. In his eager acquiescence, he would blunder into 



10 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

any trap that was laid for him. A grain or two of the 
stolid self-sufficiency of the blockheads who laughed at 
him would not only have improved his character, but 
would have considerably added to the happiness of his 
life. 

As a natural consequence of this timidity, Goldsmith, 
when opportunity served, assumed airs of magnificent 
importance. Every one knows the story of the mistake 
on which She Stoops to Conquer is founded. Getting 
free at last from all the turmoil, and anxieties, and 
mortifications of school -life, and returning home on a 
lent hack, the released schoolboy is feeling very grand 
indeed. He is now sixteen, would fain pass for a man, 
and has a whole golden guinea in his pocket. And so 
he takes the journey very leisurely until, getting be- 
nighted in a certain village, he asks the way to the 
"best house," and is directed by a facetious person 
to the house of the squire. The squire by good luck 
falls in with the joke ; and then we have a very pretty 
comedy indeed — the impecunious schoolboy playing the 
part of a fine gentleman on the strength of his solitary 
guinea, ordering a bottle of wine after his supper, and 
inviting his landlord and his landlord's wife and daugh- 
ter to join him in the supper-room. The contrast, in 
She Stoops to Conquer, between Marlow's embarrassed 
diffidence on certain occasions and his audacious 
effrontery on others, found many a parallel in the inci- 
dents of Goldsmith's own life ; and it is not improb- 
able that the writer of the comedy was thinking of some 
of his own experiences, when he made Miss Hardcastle 
say to her timid suitor : "A want of courage upon 
some occasions assumes the appearance of ignorance, and 
betrays us when we most want to excel." 



ii.| SCHOOL AND COLL L< i E. 1 L 

It was, perhaps, just as well that the supper, and 
bottle of wine, and lodging at Squire Featherston's had 
not to be paid for out of the schoolboy' s guinea ; for 
young Goldsmith was now on his way to college, and the 
funds at the disposal of the Goldsmith family were not 
over-abundant. Goldsmith's sister having married the 
son of a well-to-do man, her father considered it a point 
of honor that she should have a dowry ; and in giving 
her a sum of £400 he so crippled the means of the 
family, that Goldsmith had to be sent to college not as 
a pensioner but as a sizar. It appears that the young 
gentleman's pride revolted against this proposal ; and 
that he was won over to consent only by the persuasions 
of his uncle Contarine, who himself had been a sizar. 
So Goldsmith, now in his eighteenth year, went fed Dub- 
lin ; managed somehow or other — though he was the last 
in the list — to pass the necessary examination ; and en- 
tered upon his college career (1745). 

How he lived, and what he learned, at Trinity College, 
are both largely matters of conjecture ; the chief features 
of such record as we have are the various means of 
raising a little money to which the poor sizar had to re- 
sort ; a continual quarrelling with his tutor, an ill-condi- 
tioned brute, who baited Goldsmith and occasionally beat 
him ; and a chance frolic when funds were forthcoming. 
It was while he was at Trinity College that his father 
died ; so that Goldsmith was rendered more than ever 
dependent on the kindness of his uncle Contarine, who 
throughout seems to have taken much interest in his odd, 
ungainly nephew. A loan from a friend or a visit to the 
pawnbroker tided over the severer difficulties ; and then 
from time to time the writing of street-ballads, for which 
he got five shillings a-piece at a certain repository, came 



12 GOLDSMITH. [chap. ii. 

in to help. It was a happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth sort 
of existence, involving a good deal of hardship and humil- 
iation, but having its frolics and gayeties notwithstand- 
ing. One of these was pretty near to putting an end to 
his collegiate career altogether. He had, smarting under 
a public admonition for having been concerned in a riot, 
taken seriously to his studies and had competed for a 
scholarship. He missed the scholarship, but gained an 
exhibition of the value of thirty shillings ; whereupon 
he collected a number of friends of both sexes in his 
rooms, and proceeded to have high jinks there. In the 
midst of the dancing and uproar, in comes his tutor, in 
such a passion that he knocks Goldsmith down. This 
insult, received before his friends, was too much for the 
unlucky sizar, who, the very next day, sold his books, 
ran away from college, and ultimately, after having 
been on the verge of starvation once or twice, made his 
way to Lissoy. Here his brother got hold of him, per- 
suaded him to go back, and the escapade was condoned 
somehow. Goldsmith remained at Trinity College until 
he took his degree (1749). He was again lowest in the 
list ; but still he had passed ; and he must have learned 
something. He was now twenty-one, with all the world 
before him ; and the question was as to how he was to 
employ such knowledge as he had acquired. 



CHAPTER III. 

IDLENESS AND FOREIGN TRAVEL. 

But Goldsmith was not in any hurry to acquire either 
wealth or fame. He had a happy knack of enjoying the 
present hour — especially when there were one or two 
boon companions with him, and a pack of cards to be 
found ; and, after his return to his mother's house, 
he appears to have entered upon the business of idle- 
ness with much philosophical satisfaction. If he was 
not quite such an unlettered clown as he has de- 
scribed in Tony Lumpkin, he had at least all Tony 
Lumpkin's high spirits and love of joking and idling ; 
and he was surrounded at the ale-house by just such 
a company of admirers as used to meet at the fa- 
mous Three Pigeons. Sometimes lie helped in his 
brother's school ; sometimes he went errands for his 
mother ; occasionally he would sit and meditatively play 
the flute — for the day was to be passed somehow ; then 
in the evening came the assemblage in Conway's inn, 
with the glass, and the pipe, and the cards, and the up- 
roarious jest or song. " But Scripture saith an ending to 
all line things must be," and the friends of this jovial 
young " buckeen" began to tire of his idleness and his 
recurrent visits. They gave him hints that he might set 
about doing something to provide himself with a living : 



14 GOLDSMITH. |r,iAi\ 

and the first thing they thought of was that he should go 
into the Church — perhaps as a sort of purification-house 
after George Conway's inn. Accordingly Goldsmith, 
who appears to have been a most good-natured and com- 
pliant youth, did make application to the -Bishop of 
Elphin. There is some doubt about the precise reasons 
which induced the Bishop to decline Goldsmith's appli- 
cation, but at any rate the Church was denied the aid of 
the young man's eloquence and erudition. Then he 
tried teaching, and through the good offices of his uncle 
he obtained a tutorship which he held for a considerable 
time — long enough, indeed, to enable him to amass a 
sum of thirty pounds. When he quarrelled with his pa- 
tron, and once more " took the world for his pillow," as 
the Gaelic stories say, he had this sum in his pocket and 
was possessed of a good horse. 

He started away from Ballymahon, where his mother 
was now living, with some vague notion of making his for- 
tune as casual circumstance might direct. The expedi- 
tion came to a premature end ; and he returned without 
the money, and on the back of a wretched animal, tell- 
ing his mother a cock-and-bull story of the most amus- 
ing simplicity. " If Uncle Contarine believed those let- 
ters," says Mr. Thackeray, " if Oliver's mother be- 
lieved that story which the youth related of his going to 
Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America ; of 
his having paid his passage-money, and having sent his 
kit on board ; of the anonymous captain sailing away 
with Oliver's valuable luggage, in a nameless ship, 
never to return — if Uncle Contarine and the mother at 
Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a 
very simple pair ; as it was a very simple rogue indeed 
who cheated them." Indeed, if any one is anxious to 



1 1 i.l IDLENESS AND FOREIGN TRAVEL. 15 

till up this hiatus in Goldsmith's life, the best thing he 
can do is to discard Goldsmith's suspicious record of his 
adventures, and put in its place the faithful record of the 
adventures of Mr. Barry Lyndon, when that modest 
youth left his mother's house and rode to Dublin, with a 
certain number of guineas in his pocket. But whether 
Uncle Contarine believed the story or no, he was ready to 
give the young gentleman another chance ; and this time 
it was the legal profession that was chosen. Goldsmith 
got fifty pounds from his uncle, and reached Dublin. In 
a remarkably brief space of time he had gambled away 
the fifty pounds, and was on his way back to Ballyma- 
hon, where his mother's reception of him was not very 
cordial, though his uncle forgave him, and was once more 
ready to start him in life. But in what direction ? 
Teaching, the Church, and the law had lost their attrac- 
tions for him. Well, this time it was medicine. In 
fact, any sort of project was capable of drawing forth the 
good old uncle's bounty. The funds were again forth- 
coming ; Goldsmith started for Edinburgh, and now 
(1752) saw Ireland for the last time. 

He lived, and he informed his uncle that he studied, 
in Edinburgh for a year and a half ; at the end of which 
time it appeared to him that his knowledge of medicine 
would be much improved by foreign travel. There was 
Albinus, for example, " the great professor of Leyden, " 
as he wrote to the credulous uncle, from whom he would 
doubtless learn much. When, having got another twen- 
ty pounds for travelling expenses, he did reach Ley- 
den (1754), he mentioned Gaubius, the chemical profes- 
sor. Gaubius is also a good name. That his intercourse 
with these learned persons, and the serious nature of his 
studies, were not incompatible with a little light relaxa- 



16 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

tion in the way of gambling is not impossible. On one 
occasion, it is said, lie was so lucky that lie came to a 
fellow-student with his pockets full of money ; and was 
induced to resolve never to play again — a resolution bro- 
ken about as soon as made. Of course he lost all his 
winnings, and more ; and had to borrow a trifling sum to 
get himself out of the place. Then an incident occurs 
which is highly characteristic of the better side of Gold- 
smith's nature. He had just got this money, and was 
about to leave Ley den, when, as Mr. Forster writes, " he 
passed a florist's garden on his return, and seeing some 
rare and high-priced flower, which his uncle Contarine, 
an enthusiast in such things, had often spoken and been 
in search of, he ran in without other thought ^han of im- 
mediate pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel of 
the roots, and sent them off to Ireland." He had a 
guinea in his pocket when he started on the grand tour. 

Of this notable period in Goldsmith's life (1755-6) 
very little is known, though a good deal has been 
guessed. A minute record of all the personal adventures 
that befell the wayfarer as he trudged from country to 
country, a diary of the odd humors and fancies that must 
have occurred to him in his solitary pilgrimages, would 
be of quite inestimable value ; but even the letters that 
Goldsmith wrote home from time to time are lost ; while 
The Traveller consists chiefly of a series of philosophical 
reflections on the government of various states, more 
likely to have engaged the attention of a Fleet-street 
author, living in an atmosphere of books, than to have 
occupied the mind of a tramp anxious about his supper 
and his night's lodging. Boswell says he " disputed" 
his way through Europe. It is much more probable that 
he begged his way through Europe. The romantic ver- 



III.] IDLENESS AM; FOREIGN TRAVEL. IT 

bion, which has been made the subject of main a charm 
ing picture, is that he was entertained by the peasantry 
whom he had delighted with his playing on the flute. It 
is quite probable that Goldsmith, whose imagination had 
been captivated by the story of how Baron von Holberg 
had as a young man really passed through France, Ger- 
many, and Holland in this Orpheus-like manner, may 
have put a flute in his pocket when he left Leyden ; but 
it is far from safe to assume, as is generally done, that 
Goldsmith was himself the hero of the adventures de- 
scribed in Chapter XX. of the Vicar of Wakefield. It 
is the more to be regretted that we have no authentic 
record of these devious wanderings, that by this time 
Goldsmith had acquired, as is shown in other letters, a 
polished, easy, and graceful style, with a very considera- 
ble faculty of humorous observation. Those ingenious 
letters to his uncle (they usually included a little hint 
about money) were, in fact, a trifle too literary both in 
substance and in form ; we could even now, looking at 
them with a pardonable curiosity, have spared a little of 
their formal antithesis for some more precise information 
about the writer and his surroundings. 

The strangest thing about this strange journey all over- 
Europe was the failure of Goldsmith to pick up even a 
common and ordinary acquaintance with the familiar 
facts of natural history. The ignorance on this point of 
the author of the Animated Nature was a constant sub- 
ject of jest among Goldsmith's friends. They declared 
he could not tell the difference between any two sorts of 
barn-door fowl until he saw them cooked and on the 
table. But it may be said prematurely here that, even 
when he is wrong as to his facts or his sweeping general- 
izations, one is inclined to forgive him on account of the 



18 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

quaint gracefulness and point of his style. When Mr. 
Burchell says, " This rule seems to extend even to other 
animals : the little vermin race are ever treacherous, 
cruel, and cowardly, whilst those endowed with strength 
and power are generous, brave, and gentle, ' ' we scarcely 
stop to reflect that the merlin, which is not much bigger 
than a thrush, has an extraordinary courage and spirit, 
while the lion, if all stories be true, is, unless when 
goaded by hunger, an abject skulker. Elsewhere, indeed, 
in the Animated Nature, Goldsmith gives credit to the 
smaller birds for a good deal of valor, and then goes on 
to say, with a charming freedom, " But their conten- 
tions are sometimes of a gentler nature. Two male birds 
shall strive in song till, after a long struggle, the loudest 
shall entirely silence the other. During these contentions 
the female sits an attentive silent auditor, and often 
rewards the loudest songster with her company during 
the season." Yet even this description of the battle of 
the bards, with the queen of love as arbiter, is scarcely 
so amusing as his happy -go-lucl^y notions with regard to 
the variability of species. The philosopher, flute in 
hand, who went wandering from the canals of Holland to 
the ice-ribbed falls of the Rhine, may have heard from 
time to time that contest between singing-birds which he 
so imaginatively describes ; but it was clearly the Fleet- 
street author, living among books, who arrived at the 
conclusion that intermarriage of species is common 
among small birds and rare among big birds. Quoting 
some lines of Addison's which express the belief that 
birds are a virtuous race — that the nightingale, for exam- 
ple, does not covet the wife of his neighbor, the black- 
bird — Goldsmith goes on to observe, " But whatever 
may be the poet's opinion, the probability is against this 



in. J [DLENESS AND FOREIGN TRAVEL. 19 

fidelity among* the smaller tenants of the grove. The 
great birds are mnch more true to their species than 
these ; and, of consequence, the varieties among them 
are more few. Of the ostrich, the cassowary, and the 
eagle, there are but few species ; and no arts that man 
can use could probably induce them to mix with each 
other." 

What he did bring back from his foreign travels was a 
medical degree. Where he got it, and how he got it, are 
alike matters of pure conjecture ; but it is extremely im- 
probable that — whatever he might have been willing to 
write home from Padua or Louvain, in order to coax an- 
other remittance from his Irish friends — he would after- 
wards, in the presence of such men as Johnson, Burke, 
and Reynolds, wear sham honors. It is much more 
probable that, on his finding those supplies from Ireland 
running ominously short, the philosophic vagabond de- 
termined to prove to his correspondents that he was 
really at work somewhere, instead of merely idling away 
his time, begging or borrowing the wherewithal to pass 
him from town to town. That he did see something of 
the foreign universities is evident from his own writings ; 
there are touches of description here and there which he 
could not well have got from books. W T ith this degree, 
and with such book-learning and such knowledge of na- 
ture and human nature as he had chosen or managed to 
pick up during all those years, he was now called upon 
to begin life for himself. The Irish supplies stopped 
altogether. His letters were left unanswered. And so 
Goldsmith somehow or other got back to London (Feb- 
ruary 1, 1756), and had to cast about for some way of 
earning his daily bread. 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY STRUGGLES HACK-WRITING. 

Here ensued a very dark period in his life. He was 
alone in London, without friends, without money, with- 
out introductions ; his appearance was the reverse of pre- 
possessing ; and, even despite that medical degree and 
his acquaintance with the learned Albinus and the learned 
Gaubius, he had practically nothing of any value to offer 
for sale in the great labor-market of the world. How he 
managed to live at all is a mystery : it is certain that he 
must have endured a great dea* of want ; and one may 
well sympathize with so gentle and sensitive a creature 
reduced to such straits, without inquiring too curiously 
into the causes of his misfortunes. If, on the one hand, 
we cannot accuse society, or Christianity, or the English 
government of injustice and cruelty because Goldsmith 
had gambled away his chances and was now called on to 
pay the penalty, on the other hand, we had better, before 
blaming Goldsmith himself, inquire into the origin of 
those defects of character which produced such results. 
As this would involve an excursus into the controversy 
between Necessity and Free-will, probably most people 
would rather leave it alone. It may safely be said in 
any case that, while Goldsmith's faults and follies, of 
which he himself had to suffer the consequences.- *re 



iv.j EARLY STRUGGLES— HACK-WRITING. 3t 

patent enough, his character, on the whole, was distinctly 
a lovable one. Goldsmith was his own enemy, and 
everybody else's friend : that is not a serious indict- 
ment, as things go. lie was quite well aware of his 
weaknesses ; and he was also — it may be hinted — aware 
of the good-nature which he put forward as condona- 
tion. If some foreigner were to ask how it is that so 
thoroughly a commercial people as the English are — 
strict in the acknowledgment and payment of debt 
— should have always betrayed a sneaking fondness for 
the character of the good-humored scapegrace whose 
hand is in everybody's pocket, and who throws away 
other people's money with the most charming air in the 
world, Goldsmith might be pointed to as one of many 
literary teachers whose own circumstances were not likely 
to make them severe censors of the Charles Surfaces, or 
lenient judges of the Joseph Surfaces of the world. Be 
merry while you may ; let to-morrow take care of itself ; 
share your last guinea with any one, even if the poor 
drones of society — the butcher, and baker, and milkman 
w ith his score — have to suffer ; do any thing you like, so 
long as you keep the heart warm. All this is a delight- 
ful philosophy. It has its moments of misery — its pe- 
riods of reaction — but it has its moments of high delight. 
When we are invited to contemplate the " evil destinies 
of men of letters," we ought to be shown the flood- 
tides as well as the ebb-tides. The tavern gayety ; the 
brand-new coat and lace and sword ; the midnight frolics, 
with jolly companions every one — these, however brief 
and intermittent, should not be wholly left out of the 
picture. Of course it is very dreadful to hear of poor 
Boyse lying in bed with nothing but a blanket over him, 
and with his arms thrust through two holes in the blan- 



32 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

ket, so that he could write — perhaps a continuation of 
his poem on the Deity. But then we should be shown 
Boyse when he was spending the money collected by Dr. 
Johnson to get the poor scribbler's clothes out of pawn ; 
and we should also be shown him, with his hands 
through the holes in the blanket, enjoying the mushrooms 
and truffles on which, as a little garniture for " his last 
scrap of beef," he had just laid out his last half -guinea. 

There were but few truffles — probably there was but 
little beef — for Goldsmith during this sombre period. 
" His threadbare coat, his uncouth figure, and Hibernian 
dialect caused him to meet with repeated refusals." But 
at length he got some employment in a chemist's shop, 
and this was a start. Then he tried practicing in a small 
way on his own account in Southwark. Here he made 
the acquaintance of a printer's workman ; and through 
him he was engaged as corrector of the press in the 
establishment of Mr. Samuel Richardson. Being so near 
to literature, he caught the infection ; and naturally be- 
gan with a tragedy. This tragedy was shown to the 
author of Clarissa Harlowe ; but it only went the way of 
many similar first inspiritings of the Muse. Then Gold- 
smith drifted to Peckham, where we find him (1757) in- 
stalled as usher at Dr. Milner's school. Goldsmith as 
usher has been the object of much sympathy ; and he 
would certainly deserve it, if we are to assume that his 
description of an usher's position in the Bee, and in 
George Primrose's advice to his cousin, was a full and 
accurate description of his life at Peckham. "Brow- 
beat by the master, hated for my ugly face by the mis- 
tress, worried by the boys" — if that was his life, he was 
much to be pitied. But we cannot belieVe it. The Mil- 
ners were exceedingly kind t<> Goldsmith. It was at the 



iv. I EARLY STRUGGLES— HACK- WRITING. 23 

intercession of young Milner, who had been his fellow- 
student at Edinburgh, that Goldsmith got the situation, 
which at all events kept him out of the reach of immedi- 
ate want. It was through the Milners that he was intro- 
duced to Griffiths, who gave him a chance of trying a 
literary career — as a hack-writer of reviews and so forth. 
When, having got tired of that, Goldsmith was again 
floating vaguely on the waves of chance, where did 
lie find a harbor but in that very school at Peckham ? 
And we have the direct testimony of the youngest of Dr. 
Milner's daughters, that this Irish usher of theirs was 
a remarkably cheerful, and even facetious person, con- 
stantly playing tricks and practical jokes, amusing the 
boys by telling stories and by performances on the flute, 
living a careless life, and always in advance of his salary. 
Any beggars, or group of children, even the very boys 
who played back practical jokes on him, were welcome 
to a share of what small funds he had ; and we all know 
how Mrs. Milner good-naturedly said one day, " You 
had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me keep your money for 
you, as I do for some of the young gentlemen ;" and 
bow he answered with much simplicity, " In truth, Mad- 
am, there is equal need." With Goldsmith's love of 
approbation and extreme sensitiveness, he no doubt suf- 
fered deeply from many slights, now as at other times ; 
but what w T e know of his life in the Peckham school does 
not incline us to believe that it was an especially misera- 
ble period of his existence. His abundant cheerfulness 
does not seem to have at any time deserted him ; and 
what with tricks, and jokes, and playing of the flute, the 
dull routine of instructing the unruly young gentlemen at 
Dr. Milner's was got through somehow. 

When Goldsmith left the Peckham school to try hack- 



2-4 GOLDSMITH. [char 

writing in Paternoster Row, he was going further to fare 
worse. Griffiths the bookseller, when he met Goldsmith 
at Dr. Milner's dinner-table and invited him to become a 
reviewer, was doing a service to the English nation — for 
it was in this period of machine- work that Goldsmith dis^ 
covered that happy faculty of literary expression that led 
to the composition of his masterpieces — but he was doing 
little immediate service to Goldsmith. 

The newly -captured hack was boarded and lodged at 
Griffiths' house in Paternoster Row (1757) ; he was to 
have a small salary in consideration of remorselessly con- 
stant work ; and — what was the hardest condition of all — 
he was to have his writings revised by Mrs. Griffiths. Mr. 
Forster justly remarks that though at last Goldsmith had 
thus become a man-of -letters, he ' ' had gratified no pas- 
sion and attained no object of ambition." He had 
taken to Literature, as so many others have done, merely 
as a last resource. And if it is true that literature at first 
treated Goldsmith harshly, made him work hard, and 
gave him comparatively little for what he did, at least it 
must be said that his experience was not a singular one. 
Mr. Forster says that literature was at that time in a tran- 
sition state : " The patron was gone, and the public had 
not come." But when Goldsmith began to do better 
than hack-work, he found a public speedily enough. If, 
as Lord Macaulay computes, Goldsmith received in the 
last seven years of his life what was equivalent to £5600 
of our money, even the villain booksellers cannot be ac- 
cused of having starved him. At the outset of his liter- 
ary career he received no large sums, for he had achieved 
no reputation ; but he got the market-rate for his work. 
We have around us at this moment plenty of hacks who 



iv.] EARLY STRUGGLES— HACK-WRITING. 25 

do not earn much more than their board and lodging 
Willi a small saiary. 

For the rest, we have no means of knowing whether 
Goldsmith got through his work with ease or with diffi- 
culty ; but it is obvious, looking over the reviews which 
he is believed to have written for Griffiths' magazine, 
that he readily acquired the professional critic's airs of 
superiority, along with a few tricks of the trade, no 
doubt taught him by Griffiths. Several of these reviews, 
for example, are merely epitomes of the contents of the 
books reviewed, with some vague suggestion that the 
writer might, if he had been less careful, have done 
worse, and, if he had been more careful, might have 
done better. Who does not remember how the philo- 
sophic vagabond was taught to become a cognoscento ? 
1 ' The whole secret consisted in a strict adherence to two 
rules : the one always to observe that the picture might 
have been better if the painter had taken more pains ; 
and the other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino." 
It is amusing to observe the different estimates formed of 
the function of criticism by Goldsmith the critic and by 
Goldsmith the author. Goldsmith, sitting at Griffiths' 
desk, naturally magnifies his office, and announces his 
opinion that " to direct our taste, and conduct the poet 
up to perfection, has ever been the true critic's prov- 
ince." But Goldsmith the author, when he comes to 
inquire into the existing state of Polite Learning in Eu- 
rope, finds in criticism not a help but a danger. It is 
" the natural destroyer of polite learning." And again, 
in the Citizen of the World, he exclaims against the pre- 
tensions of the critic. " If any choose to be critics, it is 
but saying they are critics ; and from that time forward 
thev become invested with full power and authoritv over 

C 9* 



26 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

every caitiff who aims at their instruction or entertain- 
ment." 

This at least may be said, that in these early essays 
contributed to the Monthly Review there is much more 
of Goldsmith the critic than of Goldsmith the author. 
They are somewhat labored performances. They are al- 
most devoid of the sly and delicate humor that after- 
wards marked Goldsmith's best prose work. We find 
throughout his trick of antithesis ; but here it is forced 
and formal, whereas afterwards he lent to this habit of 
writing the subtle surprise of epigram. They have the 
true manner of authority, nevertheless. He says of 
Home's Douglas: "Those parts of nature, and that 
rural simplicity with which the author was, perhaps, best 
acquainted, are not unhappily described ; and hence we 
are led to conjecture that a more universal knowledge of 
nature will probably increase his powers of description." 
If the author had written otherwise, he would have writ- 
ten differently ; had he known more, he would not have 
been so ignorant ; the tragedy is a tragedy, but why did 
not the author make it a comedy ? — this sort of criticism 
has been heard of even in our own day. However, 
Goldsmith pounded away at his newly-found work, under 
the eye of the exacting bookseller and his learned wife. 
We find him dealing with Scandinavian (here called Cel- 
tic) mythology, though he does not adventure on much 
comment of his own ; then he engages Smollett's History 
of England, but mostly in the way of extract ; anon we 
find him reviewing A Journal of Eight Days'' Journey, 
by Jonas Han way, of whom Johnson said that he made 
some reputation by travelling abroad, and lost it all by 
travelling at home. Then again we find him writing a dis- 
quisition on Some Enquiries concerning the First Inhab- 



iv.] EARLY STRUGGLES— HACK-WRITING. 27 

itants, Language, Religion, Learning, and Letters of Eu- 
rope, by a Mr. Wise, who, along with his critic, appears 
to have got into hopeless confusion in believing Basque 
and Armorican to be the remains of the same ancient 
language. The last phrase of a note appended to this 
review by Goldsmith probably indicates his own humble 
estimate of his work at this time. " It is more our busi- 
ness," he says, " to exhibit the opinions of the learned 
than to controvert them." In fact, he was employed to 
boil down books for people who did not wish to spend 
more on literature than the price of a magazine. 
Though he was new to the trade, it is probable he did it 
as well as any other. 

At the end of five months, Goldsmith and Griffiths 
quarrelled and separated. Griffiths said Goldsmith was 
idle ; Goldsmith said Griffiths was impertinent ; proba- 
bly the editorial supervision exercised by Mrs. Griffiths 
had something to do with the dire contention. From 
Paternoster Row Goldsmith removed to a garret in Fleet 
Street ; had his letters addressed to a coffee-house ; and 
apparently supported himself by further hack-work, his 
connection with Griffiths not being quite severed. Then 
he drifted back to Peckham again ; and was once more 
installed as usher, Dr. Milner being in especial want of an 
assistant at this time. Goldsmith's lingering about the 
gates of literature had not inspired him with any great 
ambition to enter the encharited land. But at the same 
time he thought he saw in literature a means by which a 
little ready money might be made, in order to help him 
on to something more definite and substantial ; and this 
goal was now put before him by Dr. Milner, in the shape 
of a medical appointment on the Coromandel coast. It 
was in the hope of obtaining this appointment that he 



28 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

act about composing that Enquiry into the Present State 
of Polite Learning in Europe, which is now interesting 
to us as the first of his more ambitious works. As the 
book grew under his hands, he began to cast about for 
subscribers ; and from the Fleet-street coffee-house — he 
had again left the Peckham school — he addressed to his 
friends and relatives a series of letters of the most charm- 
ing humor, which might have drawn subscriptions from a 
millstone. To his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, he sent a 
glowing account of the great fortune in store for him on 
the Coromandel coast. ' ' The salary is but trifling, ' ' he 
writes, " namely, £100 per annum, but the other advan- 
tages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The 
practice of the place, if I am rightly informed, generally 
amounts to not less than £i000 per annum, for which 
the appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. 
This, with the advantages resulting from trade, and the 
high interest which money bears, viz. £20 per cent, are 
the inducements which persuade me to undergo the 
fatigues of sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater 
dangers of the climate ; which induce me to leave a place 
where I am every day gaining friends and esteem, and 
where I might enjoy all the conveniences of life." 

The surprising part of this episode in Goldsmith's life 
is that he did really receive the appointment ; in fact, lie 
was called upon to pay £10 for the appointment-warrant. 
In this emergency he went to the proprietor of the Criti- 
cal Review, the rival of the Monthly, and obtained some 
money for certain anonymous work which need not be 
mentioned in detail here. He also moved into another 
garret, this time in Green-Arbor Court, Fleet Street, in 
a wilderness of slums. The Coromandel project, how- 
ever, on which so many hopes had been built, fell 



IV.] EARLY STRUGGLES.— HACK-WRITING. 20 

through. No explanation of the collapse could be got 
from either Goldsmith himself or from Dr. Milner. Mr. 
Forster suggests that Goldsmith's inability to raise money 
for his outfit may have been made the excuse for trans- 
ferring the appointment to another ; and that is probable 
enough ; but it is also probable that the need for such an 
excuse was based on the discovery that Goldsmith was 
not properly qualified for the post. And this seems the 
more likely, that Goldsmith immediately afterwards re- 
solved to challenge examination at Surgeons' Hall. He 
undertook to write four articles for the Monthly Review ; 
Griffiths became surety to a tailor for a fine suit of 
clothes ; and thus equipped, Goldsmith presented him- 
self at Surgeons' Hall. He only wanted to be passed as 
hospital mate ; but even that modest ambition was unful- 
filled. He was found not qualified, and returned, with 
his fine clothes, to his Fleet-street den. He was now 
thirty years of age (1758) ; and had found no definite 
occupation in the world. 



CHAPTER V. 

BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP THE BEE. 

During the period that now ensued, and amid much 
quarrelling with Griffiths and hack-writing for the Criti- 
cal Revieiv, Goldsmith managed to get his Enquiry into 
the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe com- 
pleted ; and it is from the publication of that work, on 
the 2d of April, 1759, that we may date the beginning 
of Goldsmith's career as an author. The book was pub- 
lished anonymously ; but Goldsmith was not at all anx- 
ious to disclaim the parentage of his first-born ; and in 
Grub Street and its environs, at least, the authorship of 
the book was no secret. Moreover, there was that in it 
which was likely to provoke the literary tribe to plenty of 
fierce talking. The Enquiry is neither more nor less 
than an endeavor to prove that criticism has in all ages 
been the deadly enemy of art and literature ; coupled 
with an appeal to authors to draw their inspiration from 
nature rather than from books, and varied here and there 
by a gentle sigh over the loss of that patronage, in the 
sunshine of which men of genius were wont to bask. 
Goldsmith, not having been an author himself, could not. 
have suffered much at the hands of the critics ; so that it 
is not to be supposed that personal feeling dictated this 
fierce onslaught on the whole tribe of critics, compilers, 



v.j BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.— THE BEE. 31 

and commentators. They are represented to ns as rank- 
weeds growing up to choke all manifestations of true art. 
" Ancient learning," we are told at the outset, " may be 
distinguished into three periods : its commencement, or 
the age of poets ; its maturity, or the age of philoso- 
phers ; and its decline, or the age of critics." Then onr 
guide carries us into the dark ages ; and, with lantern in 
hand, shows us the creatures swarming there in the slug- 
gish pools — " commentators, compilers, polemic divines, 
and intricate metaphysicians." We come to Italy : look 
at the affectations with which the Virtuosi and Filosofi 
have enchained the free spirit of poetry. ' ' Poetry is no 
longer among them an imitation of what we see, but of 
what a visionary might wish. The zephyr, breathes the 
most exquisite perfume ; the trees wear eternal verdure ; 
fawns, and dryads, and hamadryads, stand ready to fan 
the sultry shepherdess, who has forgot, indeed, the pret- 
tiness with which Guarini's shepherdesses have been re- 
proached, but is so simple and innocent as often to have 
no meaning. Happy country, where the pastoral age be- 
gins to revive ! — where the wits even of Rome are united 
into a rural group of nymphs and swains, under the ap- 
pellation of modern Arcadians ! — where in the midst of 
porticoes, processions, and cavalcades, abbes turned 
shepherds and shepherdesses without sheep indulge their 
innocent divertimenti /" 

In Germany the ponderous volumes of the commenta- 
tors next come in for animadversion ; and here we find 
an epigram, the quaint simplicity of which is peculiarly 
characteristic of Goldsmith. " Were angels to write 
books," he remarks, " they never would write folios." 
But Germany gets credit for the money spent by her 
potentates on learned institutions ; and it is perhaps Eng- 



32 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

land that is delicately hinted at in these words : " Had 
the fourth part of the immense sum above mentioned 
been given in proper rewards to genius, in some neigh- 
boring countries, it would have rendered the name of the 
donor immortal, and added to the real interests of soci- 
ety. " Indeed, when we come to England, we find that 
men of letters are in a bad way, owing to the prevalence 
of critics, the tyranny of booksellers, and the absence of 
patrons. " The author, when unpatronized by the great, 
has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot 
perhaps be imagined a combination more prejudicial to 
taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as 
little for writing, and of the other to write as much as 
possible. Accordingly, tedious compilations and periodi- 
cal magazines are the result of their joint endeavors. In 
these circumstances the author bids adieu to fame, writes 
for bread, and for that only. Imagination is seldom 
called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with 
the most phlegmatic apathy ; and, as we are told of the 
Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her lap. 
His reputation never spreads in a wider circle than that of 
the trade, who generally value him, not for the fineness 
of his compositions, but the quantity he works off in a 
given time. 

" A long habit of writing for bread thus turns the am- 
bition of every author at last into avarice. He finds that 
he has written many years, that the public are scarcely 
acquainted even with his name ; he despairs of applause, 
and turns to profit, which invites him. He finds that 
money procures all those advantages, that respect, and 
that ease which he vainly expected from fame. Thus the 
man who, under the protection of the great, might have 
done honor to humanity, when only patronized by the 



v.] BEG INNING OF AUTHORSHIP.— THE BEE. 38 

bookseller becomes a thing little superior to the fellow 
who works at the press. •' ' 

Nor was he afraid to attack the critics of his own day, 
though he knew that the two Reviews for which he had 
recently been writing- would have something to say about 
his own Enquiry. This is how he disposes of the Criti- 
cal and the Monthly : i ' We have two literary Reviews 
in London, with critical newspapers and magazines with- 
out number. The compilers of these resemble the com- 
moners of Rome ; they are all for levelling property, 
not by increasing their own, but by diminishing that of 
others. The man who has any good-nature in his dispo- 
sition must, however, be somewhat displeased to see dis- 
tinguished reputations often the sport of ignorance — to 
see, by one false pleasantry, the future peace of a worthy 
man's life disturbed, and this only because he has unsuc- 
cessfully attempted to instruct or amuse us. Though ill- 
nature is far from being wit, yet it is generally laughed 
at as such. The critic enjoys the triumph, and ascribes 
to his parts what is only due to his effrontery. I fire 
with indignation when I see persons wholly destitute of 
education and genius indent to the press, and thus turn 
book-makers, adding to -the sin of criticism the sin of 
ignorance also ; whose trade is a bad one, and who are 
bad workmen in the trade." Indeed there was a good 
deal of random hitting in the Enquiry, which was sure 
to provoke resentment. Why, for example, should he 
have gone out of his way to insult the highly respectable 
class of people who excel in mathematical studies ? 
"This seems a science," he observes, "to which the 
meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that 
says, ' All men might understand mathematics if they 
would.' " There was also in the first edition of the En- 



34 GOLDSMITH. [chap, 

quiry a somewhat ungenerous attack on stage -managers, 
actors, actresses, and theatrical 'things in general ; but 
this was afterwards wisely excised. It is not to be 
wondered at that, on the whole, the Enquiry should 
have been severely handled in certain quarters. Smol- 
lett, who reviewed it in the Critical Review, appears to 
have kept his temper pretty well for a Scotchman ; but 
Kenrick, a hack employed by Griffiths to maltreat the 
book in the Monthly Review, nourished his bludgeon in a 
brave manner. The coarse personalities and malevolent 
insinuations of this bully no doubt hurt Goldsmith con- 
siderably ; but, as we look at them now, they are only 
remarkable for their dulness. If Griffiths had had an- 
other Goldsmith to reply to Goldsmith, the retort would 
have been better worth reading : one can imagine the 
playful sarcasm that would have been dealt out to this 
new writer, who, in the very act of protesting against 
criticism, proclaimed himself a critic. But Goldsmiths 
are not always to , be had when wanted ; while Kenricks 
can be bought at any moment for a guinea or two a 
head. 

Goldsmith had not chosen literature as the occupation 
of his life ; he had only fallen back on it when other 
projects failed. But i^ is quite possible that now, as he 
began to take up some slight position as an author, the 
old ambition of distinguishing himself — which had flick- 
ered "before his imagination from time to time — began to 
enter into his calculations along with the more pressing 
business of earning a livelihood. And he was soon to 
have an opportunity of appealing to a wider public than 
could have been expected for that erudite treatise on the 
arts of Europe. Mr. Wilkie, a bookseller in St. Paul's 
Churchyard, proposed to start a weekly magazine, price 



v.] BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.— THE BEE. 35 

threepence, to contain essays, short stories, letters on 
the topics of the day, and so forth, more or less after 
the manner of the Spectator. He asked Goldsmith to 
become sole contributor. Here, indeed, was a very good 
opening ; for, although there were many magazines in 
the field, the public had just then a fancy for literature 
in small doses ; while Goldsmith, in entering into the 
competition, would not be hampered by the dulness of 
collaborateurs. He closed with Wilkie's offer ; and on' 
the 6th of October, 1759, appeared the first number of 
the Bee. 

For us now there is a curious autobiographical interest 
in the opening sentences of the first number ; but surely 
even the public of the day must have imagined that the 
new writer who was now addressing them was not to be 
confounded with the common herd of magazine-hacks. 
What could be more delightful than this odd mixture of 
modesty, humor, and an anxious desire to please ? — 
" There is not, perhaps, a more whimsically dismal figure 
in nature than a man of real modesty, who assumes an air 
of impudence — who, while his heart beats with anxiety, 
studies ease and affects good-humor, In this situation, 
however, a periodical writer often finds himself upon his 
first attempt to address the public in form. All his 
power of pleasing is damped by solicitude, and his cheer- 
fulness dashed with apprehension. Impressed with the 
terrors of the tribunal before which he is going to ap- 
pear, his natural humor turns to pertness, and for real wit 
he is obliged to substitute vivacity. His first publication 
draws a crowd ; they part dissatisfied ; and the author, 
never more to be indulged with a favorable hearing, is 
left to condemn the indelicacy of his own address or 
their want of discernment. For my part, as I was never 



36 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

distinguished for address, and have often even hlundered 
in making my bow, such bodings as these had like to 
have totally repressed my ambition. I was at a loss 
whether to give the public specious promises, or give 
none ; whether to be merry or sad on this solemn occa- 
sion. If I should decline all merit, it was too probable 
the hasty reader might have taken me at my word. If, 
on the other hand, like laborers in the magazine trade, I 
had, with modest impudence, humbly presumed to prom- 
ise an epitome of all the good things that ever were said 
or written, this might have disgusted those readers I most 
desire to please. Had I been merry, I might have been 
censured as vastly low ; and had I been sorrowful, I 
might have been left to mourn in solitude and silence ; 
in short, whichever way I turned, nothing presented but 
prospects of terror, despair, chandlers' shops, and waste 
paper. ' ' 

And it is just possible that if Goldsmith had kept to 
this vein of familiar causerie, the public might in time 
have been attracted by its quaintness. But no doubt Mr. 
Wilkie would have stared aghast ; and so we find Gold- 
smith, as soon as his introductory bow is made, setting 
seriously about the business of magazine-making. Very 
soon, however, both Mr. Wilkie and his editor perceived 
that the public had not been taken by their venture. 
The chief cause of the failure, as it appears to any one 
who looks over the magazine now, would seem to be the 
lack of any definite purpose. There was no marked feat- 
ure to arrest public attention, while many things were 
discarded on which the popularity of other periodicals 
had been based. There was no scandal to appeal to the 
key -hole and back-door element in human nature ; there 
were no libels and gross personalities to delight the mean 



vi. J BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.— THE BEE. 37 

and envious ; there were no fine airs of fashion to charm 
milliners anxious to know how the great talked, and 
posed, and dressed ; and there was no solemn and pomp- 
ous erudition to impress the minds of those serious and 
sensible people who buy literature as they buy butter — by 
its weight. At the beginning of No. IV. he admits that 
the new magazine has not been a success, and, in doing 
so, returns to that vein of whimsical, personal humor 
with w T hich he had started : " Were I to measure the 
merit of my present undertaking by its success or the 
rapidity of its sale, I might be led to form conclusions by 
no means favorable to the pride of an author. Should I 
estimate my fame by its extent, every newspaper and 
magazine would leave me far behind. Their fame is dif- 
fused in a very wide circle — that of some as far as Isling- 
ton, and some yet farther still ; while mine, I sincerely 
believe, has hardly travelled beyond the sound of Bow 
Bell ; and, while the works of others fly like unpinioned 
swans, I find my own move as heavily as a new-plucked 
goose. Still, however, I have as much pride as they 
who have ten times as many readers. It is impossible to 
repeat all the agreeable delusions in which a disappointed 
author is apt to find comfort. I conclude, that what my 
reputation wants in extent is made up by its solidity. 
Minus jiivat gloria lata quam magna. I have great sat- 
isfaction in considering the delicacy and discernment of 
those readers I have, and in ascribing my want of popu- 
larity to the ignorance or inattention of those I have not. 
All the world may forsake an author, but vanity will 
never forsake him. Yet, notwithstanding so sincere a 
confession, I was once induced to show my indignation 
against the public by discontinuing my endeavors to 
please ; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex 



38 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

them Dy burning my manuscript in a passion. Upon 
recollection, however, I considered what set or body of 
people would be displeased at my rashness. The sun, 
after so sad an accident, might shine next morning as 
bright as usual ; men might laugh and sing the next day 
and transact business as before, and not a single creature 
feel any regret but myself. ' ' 

Goldsmith was certainly more at home in this sort of 
writing than in gravely lecturing people against the vice 
of gambling ; in warning tradesmen how ill it became 
them to be seen at races ; in demonstrating that justice is 
a higher virtue than generosity ; and in proving that the 
avaricious are the true benefactors of society. But even 
as he confesses the failure of his new magazine, he seems 
determined to show the public what sort of writer this is, 
whom as yet they have not regarded too favorably. It is 
in No. IV. of the Bee that the famous City Night Piece 
occurs. No doubt that strange little fragment of -de- 
scription was the result of some sudden and aimless 
fancy, striking the occupant of the lonely garret in the 
middle of the night. The present tense, which he sel- 
dom used — and the abuse of which is one of the detesta- 
ble vices of modern literature — adds to the mysterious 
solemnity of the recital : 

" The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper 
rises and sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the 
hour in slumber, the laborious and the happy are at rest, 
and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and 
despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying 
bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the sui- 
cide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person. 

" Let me no longer waste the night over the page of 
antiquity or the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue 



v.] BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.— THE BEE. 39 

the solitary walk, where Vanity, ever changing, but a 
few hours past walked before me — where she kept up the 
pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed 
with her own imjJbrtiinitics. 

" What a gloom hangs all around ! The dying lamp 
feebly emits a yellow gleam ; no sound is heard but of 
the chiming clock or the distant watch-dog. All the 
bustle of human pride is forgotten ; an hour like this 
may well display the emptiness of human vanity. 

" There will come a time when this temporary soli- 
tude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its 
inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room. 

' "What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in 
existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as 
unbounded ; and, with short-sighted presumption, prom- 
ised themselves immortality ! Posterity can hardly trace 
the situation of some ; the sorrowful traveller wanders 
over the awful ruins of others ; and, as he beholds, he 
learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublu- 
nary possession. 

" ' Here,' he cries, ' stood their citadel, now grown 
over with weeds ; there their senate-house, but now the 
haunt of every noxious reptile ; temples and theatres 
stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. 
They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them 
feeble. The rewards of the state were conferred on 
amusing, and not on useful, members of society. Their 
riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at 
first repulsed, returned again, conquered by persever- 
ance, and at last swept the defendants into undistin- 
guished destruction.' " 



CHAPTER VI. 



PERSONAL TRAITS 



The foregoing extracts will sufficiently show what 
were the chief characteristics of Goldsmith's writing at 
this time — the grace and ease of style, a gentle and some- 
times pathetic thoughtfulness, and, above all, when he 
speaks in the first person, a delightful vein of humorous 
self-disclosure. Moreover, these qualities, if they were 
not immediately profitable to the booksellers, were begin- 
ning to gain for him the recognition of some of the Avell- 
known men of the day. Percy, afterwards Bishop of 
Dromore, had made his way to the miserable garret of 
the poor author. Smollett, whose novels Goldsmith pre- 
ferred to his History, was anxious to secure his services 
as a contributor to the forthcoming British Magazine. 
Burke had spoken of the pleasure given him by Gold- 
smith's review of the Enquiry into the Origin of our 
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. But, to crownfall, 
the great Cham himself sought out this obscure author, 
who had on several occasions spoken with reverence and 
admiration of his works ; and so began what is perhaps 
the most interesting literary friendship on record. At 
what precise date Johnson first made Goldsmith's ac- 
quaintance is not known ; Mr. Forstor is right in assum- 
ing that they had met before the supper in Wine-Office 



n.J PERSONAL Tit AITS. 41 

Court, at which Mr. Percy was present. It is a thousand 
pities that Boswell had not by this time made his ap- 
pearance in London. Johnson, Goldsmith, and all the 
rest of them are only ghosts until the pertinacious young 
laird of Auchinleck comes on the scene to give them 
color, and life, and form. It is odd enough that the 
very first remarks of Goldsmith's which Boswell jotted 
down in his note-book should refer to Johnson's sys- 
tematic kindness towards the poor and wretched. " He 
had increased my admiration of the goodness of John- 
son's heart by incidental remarks in the course of con- 
versation, such as, when I mentioned Mr. Levett, whom 
he entertained under his roof, ' He is poor and honest, 
which is recommendation enough to Johnson ;' and 
when I wondered that he was very kind to a man of 
whom I had heard a very bad character, ' He is now be- 
come miserable, and that insures the protection of John- 
son.' " 

For the rest, Boswell was not well-disposed towards 
Goldsmith, whom he regarded with a jealousy equal to 
his admiration of Johnson ; but it is probable that his 
description of the personal appearance of the awkward 
and ungainly Irishman is in the main correct. And here 
also it may be said that Boswell' s love of truth and accu- 
racy compelled him to make this admission : "It has 
been generally circulated and believed that he (Gold- 
smith) was a mere fool in conversation ; but, in truth, 
this has been greatly exaggerated." On this exaggera- 
tion — seeing that the contributor to the British Magazine 
and the Public Ledger was now becoming better known 
among his fellow-authors — a word or two may fitly be 
said here. It pleased Goldsmith's contemporaries, who 
were not all of them celebrated for their ready wit, to re- 



42 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

gard him as a hopeless and incurable fool, who by some 
strange chance could produce literature, the merits of 
which he could not himself understand. To Horace 
Walpole we owe the phrase which describes Goldsmith 
as an " inspired idiot." Innumerable stories are told of 
Goldsmith's blunders ; of his forced attempts to shine 
in conversation ; of poor Poll talking nonsense, when all 
the world was wondering at the beauty of his writing. 
In one case we are told he was content to admit, when 
dictated to, that this, and not that, was what he really 
had meant in a particular phrase. Now there can be no 
question that Goldsmith, conscious of his pitted face, his 
brogue, and his ungainly figure, was exceedingly nervous 
and sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such people 
mostly are, to cover his shyness by an appearance of 
ease, if not even of swagger ; and there can be as little 
question that he occasionally did and said very awkward 
and blundering things. But our Japanese friend, whom 
we mentioned in our opening pages, looking through the 
record that is preserved to us of those blunders which 
are supposed to be most conclusive as to this aspect of 
Goldsmith's character, would certainly stare. " Good 
heavens," he would cry, " did men ever live who were 
so thick-headed as not to see the humor of this or that 
' blunder ;' or were they so beset with the notion that 
Goldsmith was only a fool, that they must needs be 
blind?" Take one well-known instance. He goes to 
France with Mrs. Horneck and her two daughters, the 
latter very handsome young ladies. At Lille the two 
girls and Goldsmith are standing at the window of the 
hotel, overlooking the square in which are some sol- 
diers ; and naturally the beautiful young English-women 
attract ' some attention. Thereupon Goldsmith turns 



VI. j PERSONAL TRAITS. 43 

indignantly away, remarking that elsewhere he also has 
his admirers. Now what surgical instrument was needed 
to get this harmless little joke into any sane person's 
head ? Boswell may perhaps be pardoned for pre- 
tending to take the incident au serieux ; for as has just 
been said, in his profound adoration of Johnson, he was 
devoured by jealousy of Goldsmith ; but that any other 
mortal should have failed to see what was meant by this 
little bit of humorous flattery is almost incredible. No 
wonder that one of the sisters afterwards referring to 
this " playful jest," should have expressed her astonish- 
ment at finding it put down as a proof of Goldsmith's 
envious disposition. But even after that disclaimer, we 
find Mr. Croker, as quoted by Mr. Forster, solemnly 
doubting " whether the vexation so seriously exhibited by 
Goldsmith was real or assumed ' ' ! 

Of course this is an extreme case ; but there are 
others very similar. " He affected," says Hawkins, 
" Johnson's style and manner of conversation, and when 
he had uttered, as he often would, a labored sentence, so 
tumid as to be scarce intelligible, would ask if that 
was not truly Johnsonian?" Is it not truly dismal to 
find such an utterance coming from a presumably reason- 
able human being ? It is not to be wondered at that 
Goldsmith grew shy — and in some cases had to ward 
off the acquaintance of certain of his neighbors as being 
too intrusive — if he ran the risk of having his odd and 
grave humors so densely mistranslated. The fact is 
this, that Goldsmith was possessed of a very subtle 
quality of humor, which is at all times rare, but which 
is perhaps more frequently to be found in Irishmen than 
among other folks. It consists in the satire of the pre- 
tence and pomposities of others by means of a sort of 



44 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

exaggerated and playful self-depreciation. It is a most 
delicate and most delightful form of humor ; but it is 
very apt to be misconstrued by the dull. Who can 
doubt that Goldsmith was good-naturedly laughing at 
himself, his own plain face, his vanity, and his blunders, 
when he professed to be jealous of the admiration excited 
by the Miss Ho'rnecks ; when he gravely drew attention 
to the splendid colors of his coat ; or when he no less 
gravely informed a company of his friends that he had 
heard a very good story, but would not repeat it, because 
they would be sure to miss the point of it ? 

This vein of playful and sarcastic self-depreciation is 
continually cropping up in his essay-writing, as, for ex- 
ample, in the passage already quoted from No. IV. of 
the Bee : " I conclude that what my reputation wants in 
extent is made up by its solidity. Minus juvat gloria 
lata quam magna. I have great satisfaction in con- 
sidering the delicacy and discernment of those readers 
I have, and in ascribing my want of popularity to the 
ignorance or inattention of those I have not." But 
here, no doubt, he remembers that he is addressing 
the world at large, which contains many foolish per- 
sons ; and so, that the delicate raillery may not be 
mistaken, he immediately adds, " All the world 
may forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake 
him." That he expected a quicker apprehension on the 
part of his intimates and acquaintances, and that he 
was frequently disappointed, seems pretty clear from 
those very stories of his " blunders." We may reason- 
ably suspect, at all events, that Goldsmith was not quite 
so much of a fool as he looked ; and it is far from im- 
probable that when the ungainly Irishman was called in 
to make sport for the Philistines — and there were a good 



vr.J PERSONAL TRAITS, 45 

many Philistines in those days, if all stories be true — and 
when they imagined they had put him out of counte- 
nance, he was really standing- aghast, and wondering how 
it could have pleased Providence to create such helpless 
stupidity. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. BEAU NASI*. 

$ 

Meanwhile, to return to his literary work, the Citi- 
zen of the World had grown out of his contributions to 
the Public Ledger, a daily newspaper started by Mr. 
Newbery, another bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard. 
Goldsmith was engaged to write for this paper two letters 
a week at a guinea a-piece ; and these letters were, after 
a short time (1760), written in the character of a Chinese 
who had come to study European civilization. It may 
be noted that Goldsmith had in the Monthly Review, in 
mentioning Voltaire's memoirs of French writers, quoted 
a passage about Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes as fol- 
lows : " It is written in imitation of the Siamese Letters 
of Du Freny and of the Turkish Spy ; but it is an imi- 
tation which shows what the originals should have been. 
The success their works met with was, for the most part, 
owing to the foreign air of their performances ; the suc- 
cess of the Persian Letters arose from the delicacy of 
their satire. That satire which in the mouth of an 
Asiatic is poignant, would lose all its force when coming 
from an European. ' ' And it must certainly be said that 
the charm of the strictures of the Citizen of the World 
lies wholly in their delicate satire, and not at all in any 
foreign air which the author may have tried to lend to 



VII. J THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.— BEAU NASH. I? 

these performances. The disguise is very apparent. In 
those garrulous, vivacious, whimsical, and sometimes seri- 
ous papers, Lien Chi Altangi, writing to Fum Hoam in 
Pekin, does not so much describe the aspects of Euro- 
pean civilization which would naturally surprise a Chi- 
nese, as he expresses the dissatisfaction of a European 
with certain phases of the civilization visible everywhere 
around him. It is not a Chinaman, but a Fleet-street 
author by profession, who resents the competition of 
noble amateurs whose works otherwise bitter pills 
enough — are gilded by their titles : " A nobleman has 
but to take a pen, ink, and paper, write away through 
three large volumes, and then sign his name to the title- 
page ; though the whole might have been before more 
disgusting than his own rent-roll, yet signing his name 
and title gi r es value to the deed, title being alone equiv- 
alent to taste, imagination, and genius. As soon as a 
piece, therefore, is published, the first questions are : 
Who is the author ? Does he keep a coach ? Where 
lies his estate ? What sort of a table does he keep ? If 
he happens to be poor and unqualified for such a scru- 
tiny, he and his works sink into irremediable obscuritv. 
and too late he finds, that having fed upon turtle is a 
more ready way to fame than having digested Tully. 
The poor devil against whom fashion has set its face 
vainly alleges that he has been bred in every part of 
Europe where knowledge was to be sold ; that he has 
grown pale in the study of nature and himself. His 
works may please upon the perusal, but his pretensions 
to fame are entirely disregarded. He is treated like a 
fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, 
because he lives by it ; while a gentleman performer, 
though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audi- 



48 GOLDSMITH. chap, 

ence into raptures. The fiddler, indeed, may in such a 
case console himself by thinking, that while the other 
goes off with all the praise, he runs away with all the 
money. But here the parallel drops ; for while the 
nobleman triumphs in unmerited applause, the author by 
profession steals off with — nothing. ' ' 

At the same time it must be allowed that the utterance 
of these strictures through the mouth of a Chinese admits 
of a certain naivete, which on occasion heightens the sar- 
casm. Lien Chi accompanies the Man in Black to a 
theatre to see an English play. Here is part of the per- 
formance : " I was going to second, his remarks, when 
my attention was engrossed by a new objcat ; a man 
came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience 
were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause. 
' To what purpose,' cried I, ' does this unmeaning figure 
make his appearance ? is he a part of the plot ? ' — ' Un- 
meaning do you call him ? ' replied my friend in black ; 
1 this is one of the most important characters of the 
whole play ; nothing pleases the people more than seeing 
a straw balanced : there is a great deal of meaning in a 
straw : there is something suited to every apprehension 
in the sight ; and a fellow possessed of talents like these 
is sure of making his fortune. ' The third act now began 
with an actor who came to inform us that he was the 
villain of the play, and intended to show strange things 
before all was over. He was joined by another who 
seemed as much disposed for mischief as he; their in- 
trigues continued through this whole division. ' If that 
be a villain,' said I, ' he must be a very stupid one to tell 
his secrets without being asked ; such soliloquies of late 
are never admitted in China. ' The noise of clapping in- 
terrupted me once more ; a child six years old was learn- 



VII.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.— BEAT NASH. 49 

ing to dance on the stage, which gave the ladies and 
mandarins infinite satisfaction. ' I am sorry,' said I, ' to 
see the pretty creature so early learning so bad a trade ; 
dancing being, I presume, as contemptible here as in 
China.' — ' Quite the reverse,' interrupted my com- 
panion ; ' dancing is a very reputable and genteel em- 
ployment here ; men have a greater chance for encour- 
agement from the merit of their heels than their heads. 
One who jumps up and flourishes his toes three times be- 
fore he comes to the ground may have three hundred a 
year ; he who flourishes them four times gets four hun- 
dred ; but he who arrives at five is inestimable, and may 
demand what salary he thinks proper. The female dan- 
cers, too, are valued for this sort of jumping and cross- 
ing ; and it is a cant word amongst them, that she de- 
serves most who shows highest. But the fourth act is 
begun ; let us be attentive.' " 

The Man in Black here mentioned is one of the not- 
able features of this series of papers. The mysterious 
person whose acquaintance the Chinaman made in West- 
minster Abbey, and who concealed such a wonderful 
goodness of heart under a rough and forbidding exterior, 
is a charming character indeed ; and it is impossible to 
praise too highly the vein of subtle sarcasm in which he 
preaches worldly wisdom. But to assume that any part 
of his history which he disclosed to the Chinaman was a 
piece of autobiographical writing on the part of Gold- 
smith, is a very hazardous thing. A writer of fiction 
must necessarily use such materials as have come within 
his own experience ; and Goldsmith's experience — or his 
use of those materials — was extremely limited : witness 
how often a pet fancy, like his remembrance of Johnny 
Armstrong'' s Last Good Night, is repeated. " That of 



50 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

these simple elements," writes Professor Masson, in his 
Memoir of Goldsmith, prefixed to an edition of his works, 
" he made so many charming combinations, really differ- 
ing from each other, and all, though suggested by fact, 
yet hung so sweetly in an ideal air, proved what an artist 
he was, and was better than much that is commonly 
called invention. In short, if there is a sameness of 
effect in Goldsmith's writings, it is because they consist 
of poetry and truth, humor and pathos, from his own 
life, and the supply from such a life as his was not inex- 
haustible. ' ' 

The question of invention is easily disposed of. Any 
child can invent a world transcending human experience 
by the simple combination of ideas which are in them- 
selves incongruous — a world in which the horses have 
each five feet, in which the grass is blue and the sky 
green, in which seas are balanced on the peaks of moun- 
tains. The result is unbelievable and worthless. But 
the writer of imaginative literature uses his own experi- 
ences and the experiences of others, so that his combina- 
tion of ideas in themselves compatible shall appear so 
natural and believable that the reader — although these 
incidents and characters never did actually exist — is as 
much interested in them as if they had existed. The 
mischief of it is that the reader sometimes thinks himself 
very clever, and, recognizing a little bit of the story as 
having happened to the author, jumps to the conclusion 
that such and such a passage is necessarily autobiographi- 
cal. Hence it is that Goldsmith has been hastily identi- 
fied with the Philosophic Vagabond in the Vicar of 
Wakefield, and with the Man in Black in the Citizen of 
the World. That he may have used certain experiences 
in the one, and that he may perhaps have given in the 



VII.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.— BEAU NASH. 51 

other a sort of fancy sketch of a person suggested by 
some trait in his own character, is possible enough ; but 
further assertion of likeness is impossible. That the Man 
in Black had one of Goldsmith's little weaknesses is obvi- 
ous enough : we find him just a trifle too conscious of his 
own kindliness and generosity. The Vicar of Wakefield 
himself is not without a spice of this amiable vanity. As 
for Goldsmith, every one must remember his reply to 
Griffiths' accusation : " No, sir, had I been a sharper, 
had I been possessed of less good-nature and native gener- 
osity, I might surely now have been in better circum- 
stances. ' ' 

The Man in Black, in any case, is a delightful char- 
acter. We detect the warm and generous nature even 
in his pretence of having acquired worldly wisdom : 
" I now therefore pursued a course of uninterrupted fru- 
gality, seldom wanted a dinner, and was consequently in- 
vited to twenty. I soon began to get the character of a 
saving hunks that had money, and insensibly grew into 
esteem. Neighbors have asked my advice in the disposal 
of their daughters ; and I have always taken care not to 
give any. I have contracted a friendship with an alder- 
man, only by observing, that if we take a farthing from a 
thousand pounds it will be a thousand pounds no longer. 
I have been invited to a pawnbroker's table, by pretend- 
ing to hate gravy ; and am now actually upon treaty of 
marriage with a rich widow, for only having observed 
that the bread was rising. If ever I am asked a ques- 
tion, whether I know it or not, instead of answering, I 
only smile and look wise. If a charity is proposed, I go 
about with the hat, but put nothing in myself. If a 
wretch solicits my pity, I observe that the world is filled 
with impostors, and take a certain method of not being 



52 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

deceived by never relieving. In short, 1 now find the 
truest way of finding esteem, even from the indigent, is 
to give away nothing, and thus have much in our power 
to give." This is a very clever piece of writing, 
whether it is in strict accordance with the character of 
the Man in Black or not. But there is in these Public 
Ledger papers another sketch of character, which is not 
only consistent in itself, and in every way admirable, but 
is of still further interest to us when we remember that at 
this time the various personages in the Vicar of Wake- 
field were no doubt gradually assuming definite form in 
Goldsmith's mind. It is in the figure of Mr. Tibbs, in- 
troduced apparently at haphazard, but at once taking pos- 
session of us by its quaint relief, that we find Goldsmith 
showing a firmer hand in character-drawing. With a 
few happy dramatic touches Mr. Tibbs starts into life ; 
he speaks for himself ; he becomes one of the people 
whom we know. And yet, with this concise and sharp 
portraiture of a human being, look at the graceful, almost 
garrulous, ease of the style : 

" Our pursuer soon came up and joined us with all the 
familiarity of an old acquaintance. ' My dear Dry bone,' 
cries he, shaking my friend's hand, ' where have you 
been hiding this half a century ? Positively I had fancied 
you were gone to cultivate matrimony and your . estate in 
the country. ' During the reply I had an opportunity of 
surveying the appearance of our new companion : his hat 
was pinched up with peculiar smartness ; his looks were 
paie, thin, and sharp ; round his neck he wore a broad 
black riband, and in his bosom a buckle studded with 
glass ; his coat was trimmed with tarnished twist ; he 
wore by his side a sword with a black hilt ; and his 
stockings of silk, though newly washed, were grown yel- 



vii. J THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.— BEAU NASH. 53 

low by long service. I was so much engaged with the 
peculiarity of his dress, that I attended only to the latter 
part of my friend's reply, in which he complimented Mr. 
Tibbs on the taste of his clothes and the bloom in his 
countenance. ' Pshaw, pshaw, Will,' cried the figure, 
' no more of that, if you love me : you know I hate flat- 
tery — on my soul I do ; and yet, to be sure, an intimacy 
with the great will improve one's appearance, and a 
course of venison will fatten ; and yet, faith, I despise 
the great as much as you do ; but there are a great many 
damn'd honest fellows among them, and we must not 
quarrel with one half because the other wants weeding. 
If they were all such as my Lord Mudler, one of the 
most good-natured creatures that ever squeezed a lemon, 
I should myself be among the number of their admirers. 
T was yesterday to dine at the Duchess of Piccadilly's. 
My lord was there. "Ned," says he to me, "Ned," 
says he, " I'll hold gold to silver, I can tell you where 
you were poaching last night." " Poaching, my lord ?" 
says I ; " faith, you have missed already ; for I stayed at 
home and let the girls poach for me. That's my way : 
I take a fine woman as some animals do their prey — 
stand still, and, swoop, they fall into my mouth." ' 
'Ah, Tibbs, thou art a happy fellow,' cried my com- 
panion, with looks of infinity pity ; ' I hope your fortune 
is as much improved as your understanding, in such com- 
pany ? ' ' Improved ! ' replied the other ; ' you shall 
know — but let it go no farther — a great secret — five hun- 
dred a year to begin with — my lord's word of honor for 
it. His lordship took me down in his own chariot yes- 
terday, and we had a tete-a-tete dinner in the country, 
where we talked of nothing else.' ' I fancy you forget, 
sir,' cried 1 ; ' you told us but this moment oi your 



54 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

dining yesterday in town.' ' Did I say so ? ' replied he, 
coolly ; ' to be sure, if I said so, it was so. Dined in 
town ! egad, now I do remember, I did dine in town ; 
but I dined in the country too ; for you must know, my 
boys, I ate two dinners. By the bye, I am grown as nice 
as the devil in my eating. I'll tell you a pleasant affair 
about that : we were a select party of us to dine at Lady 
Grogram's — an affected piece, but let it go no farther- — 
a secret. Well, there happened to be no assafoetida in 
the sauce to a turkey, upon which, says I, I'll hold a 
thousand guineas, and say done, first, that — But, dear 
Drybone, you are an honest creature ; lend me half- 

a-crown for a- minute or two, or so, just till ; but 

hearkee, ask me for it the next time we meet, or it may 
be twenty to one but I forget to pay you.' " 

Returning from these performances to the author of 
them, we find him a busy man of letters, becoming more 
and more in request among the booksellers, and ob- 
taining recognition among his fellow-writers. He had 
moved into better lodgings in Wine-Office Court 
(1760-2) ; and it was here that he entertained at supper, 
as has already been mentioned, no less distinguished 
guests than Bishop, then Mr., Percy, and Dr., then Mr., 
Johnson. Every one has heard of the surprise of Percy, 
on calling for Johnson, to find* the great Cham dressed 
with quite unusual smartness. On asking the cause of 
this " singular transformation," Johnson replied, " Why, 
sir, I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, 
justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quot- 
ing my practice ; and I am desirous this night to show 
him a better example." That Goldsmith profited by 
this example — though the tailors did not — is clear 
enough. At times, indeed, he blossomed out into the 



vii. J THE CITIZEN OF THE WOULD.— BEAU NASH. 55 

splendors of a dandy ; and laughed at himself for doing 
so. But whether he was in gorgeous or in mean attire, 
he remained the same sort of happy-go-lucky creature ; 
working hard by fits and starts ; continually getting 
money in advance from the booksellers ; enjoying the 
present hour ; and apparently happy enough when not 
pressed by debt. That he should' have been thus pressed 
was no necessity of the case ; at all events we need not 
on this score begin now to abuse the booksellers or the 
public of that day. We may dismiss once for all the oft- 
repeated charges of ingratitude and neglect. 

When Goldsmith was writing those letters in the Pub- 
lic Ledger — with " pleasure and instruction for others," 
Mr. Forster says, " though at the cost of suffering to 
himself" — he was receiving for them alone what would 
be equivalent in our day to £200 a year. No man can 
affirm that £200 a year is not amply sufficient for all the 
material wants of life. Of course there are fine things in 
the world that that amount of annual wage cannot pur- 
chase. It is a fine thing to sit on the deck of a yacht on 
a summer's day, and watch the far islands shining over 
the blue ; it is a fine thing to drive four-in-hand to Ascot 
— if you can do it ; it is a fine thing to cower breathless 
behind a rock and find a splendid stag coming slowly 
within sure range. But these things are not necessary to 
human happiness : it is possible to do without them and 
yet not " suffer." Even if Goldsmith had given half of 
his substance away to the poor, there was enough left to 
cover all the necessary wants of a human being ; and if 
he chose so to order his affairs as to incur the suffering 
of debt, why that was his own business, about which 
nothing further needs be said. It is to be suspected, in- 
deed, that he did not care to practise those excellent 



56 GOLDSMITH. [chap 

maxims of prudence and frugality which he frequently 
preached ; but the world is not much concerned about 
that now. If Goldsmith had received ten times as much 
money as the booksellers gave him, he would still have 
died in debt. And it is just possible that we may exag- 
gerate Goldsmith's sensitiveness on this score. He had 
had a life-long familiarity with duns and borrowing ; and 
seemed very contented when the exigency of the hour 
was tided over. An angry landlady is unpleasant, and 
an arrest is awkward ; but in comes an opportune guinea, 
and the bottle of Madeira is opened forthwith. 

In these rooms in Wine-Office Court, and at the sug- 
gestion or entreaty of Newbery, Goldsmith produced a 
good deal of miscellaneous writing — pamphlets, tracts, 
compilations, and what not — of a more or less market- 
able kind. It can only be surmised that by this time he 
may have formed some idea of producing a book not 
solely meant for the market, and that the characters in 
the Vicar of Wakefield were already engaging his atten- 
tion ; but the surmise becomes probable enough when we 
remember that his project of writing the Traveller, 
which was not published till 1764, had been formed 
as far back as 1755, while he was wandering aim- 
lessly about Europe, and that a sketch of the poem 
was actually forwarded by him then to his brother 
Henry in Ireland. But in the meantime this hack-work, 
and the habits of life connected with it, began to tell on 
Goldsmith's health ; and so, for a time, he left London 
(1762), and went to Tunbridge and then to Bath. It is 
scarcely possible that his modest fame had preceded him 
to the latter place of fashion ; but it may be that the 
distinguished folk of the town received this friend ot 
tue great J)r. Johnson with some small measure of dis- 



vrr.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.— BEAU NASH. r >7 

tinction ; for we find that his next published work, The 
Life of Richard Nash, Esq. , is respectfully dedicated to 
the Right Worshipful the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, 
and Common Council of the City of Bath. The Life of 
the recently deceased Master of Ceremonies was pub- 
lished anonymously (1762) ; but it was generally under- 
stood to be Goldsmith's ; and indeed the secret of the 
authorship is revealed in every successive line. Among 
the minor writings of Goldsmith there is none more de- 
lightful than this : the mock-heroic gravity, the half- 
familiar contemptuous good-nature with which he com- 
poses this Funeral March of a Marionette, are extremely 
whimsical and amusing. And then what an admirable 
picture we get of fashionable English society in the be- 
ginning of the eighteenth century, when Bath and Nash 
were alike in the heyday of their glory — the fine ladies 
with their snuff-boxes, and their passion for play, and 
their extremely effective language when they got angry ; 
young bucks come to flourish away their money, and 
gain by their losses the sympathy of the fair ; sharpers 
on the lookout for guineas, and adventurers on the look- 
out for weak-minded heiresses ; duchesses writing letters 
in the most doubtful English, and chairmen swearing at 
any one who dared to walk home on foot at night. 

No doubt the Life of Beau Nash was a bookseller's 
book ; and it was made as attractive as possible by the 
recapitulation of all sorts of romantic stories about Miss 

S n, and Mr. C e, and Captain K g ; but 

throughout we find the historian very much inclined to 
laugh at his hero, and only refraining now and again in 
order to record in serious language traits indicative of the 
real goodness of disposition of that fop and gambler. 
And the fine ladies and gentlemen, who lived in that 

atmosphere of scandal, and intrigue, and gambling, are 
E 



58 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

also from time to time treated to a little decorous and 
respectful raillery. Who does not remember the famous 
laws of polite breeding written out by Mr. Nash — Gold- 
smith hints that neither Mr. Nash nor his fair correspond- 
ent at Blenheim, the Duchess of Marlborough, excelled 
in English composition — for the guidance of the ladies 
and gentlemen who were under the sway of the King of 
Bath ? " But were we to give laws to a nursery, we 
should make them childish laws," Goldsmith writes 
gravely. u His statutes, though stupid, were addressed 
to fine gentlemen and ladies, and were probably received 
with sympathetic approbation. It is certain they were in 
general religiously observed by his subjects, and executed 
by him with impartiality ; neither rank nor fortune 
shielded the refractory from his resentment." Nash, 
however, was not content with prose in enforcing good 
manners. Having waged deadly war against the custom 
of wearing boots, and having found his ordinary armory 
of no avail against the obduracy of the country squires, 
he assailed them in the impassioned language of poetry, 
and produced the following ''Invitation to the Assem- 
bly," which, as Goldsmith remarks, was highly relished 
by the nobility at Bath on account of its keenness, 
severity, and particularly its good rhymes. 

" Come, one and all, to Hoyden HalL 
For there's the assembly this night ; 

None but prude fools 

Mind manners and rules ; 
We Hoydens do decency slight. 

Come, trollops and slatterns, 

Cocked hats and white aprons, 
This best our modesty suits ; 

For why should not we 

In dress be as free 
As Hogs-Norton squires in bonis?" 



vn.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.— BEAU NASH. 51) 

The sarcasm was too much for the squires, who yielded 
in a body ; and when any stranger through inadvertence 
presented himself in the assembly-rooms in boots, Nash 
was so completely master of the situation that he would 
politely step up to the intruder and suggest that he had 
forgotten his horse. 

Goldsmith does not magnify the intellectual capacity of 
his hero ; but he gives him credit for a sort of rude wit 
that was sometimes effective enough. His physician, for 
example, having called on him to see whether he had fol- 
lowed a prescription that had been sent him the previous 
day, was greeted in this fashion : " Followed your pre- 
scription ? No. Egad, if I had, I should have broken 
my neck, for I flung it out of the two pair of stairs win- 
dow." For the rest, this diverting biography contains 
some excellent warnings against the vice of gambling ; 
with a particular account of the manner in which the 
Government of the day tried by statute after statute to 
suppress the tables at Tunbridge and Bath, thereby only 
driving the sharpers to new subterfuges. That the Beau 
was in alliance with sharpers, or, at least, that he was a 
sleeping partner in the firm, his biographer admits ; but 
it is urged on his behalf that he was the most generous 
of winners, and again and again interfered to prevent the 
ruin of some gambler by whose folly he would himself 
have profited. His constant charity was well known ; 
the money so lightly come by was at the disposal of any 
one who could prefer a piteous tale. Moreover he made 
no scruple about exacting from others that charity which 
they could well afford. One may easily guess who was 
the duchess mentioned in the following story of Gold 
smith's narration : 

' ' The suras he gave and collected for the Hospital 



00 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

were great, and liis manner of doing it was no less ad- 
mirable. I am told that he was once collecting money in 
Wiltshire's room for that purpose, when a lady entered, 
who is more remarkable for her wit than her charity, and 
not being able to pass him by unobserved, she gave him a 
pat with her fan, and said, ' You must put down a trifle 
for me, Nash, for I have no money in my pocket.' 
4 Yes, madam,' says he, 'that I will with pleasure, if 
your grace will tell me when to stop ; ' then taking an 
handful of guineas out of his pocket, he began to tell 
them into his white hat — ' One, two, three, four, 

five ' ' Hold, hold ! ' says the duchess, ' consider 

what you are about. ' ' Consider your rank and fortune, 
madam,' says Nash, and continues telling — ' six, seven, 
eight, nine, ten.' Her,e the duchess called again, and 
seemed angry. ' Pray compose yourself, madam,' cried 
Nash, ' and don't interrupt the work of charity — eleven, 
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' Here the duchess 
stormed, and caught hold of his hand. ' Peace, madam,' 
says Nash, ' you shall have your name written in letters 
of gold, madam, and upon the front of the building, 
madam — sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. ' 
' I won't pay a farthing more,' says the duchess. 
' Charity hides a multitude of sins,' replies Nash — 
' twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, 
twenty -five. ' * Nash,' says she, ' I protest you frighten 
me out of my wits. L — d, I shall die ! ' ' Madam, you 
will never die with doing good ; and if you do, it will be 
the better for you,' answered Nash, and was about to 
proceed ; but perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a 
parley ensued, when he, after much altercation, agreed to 
stop his hand and compound with her grace for thirty 
guineas. The duchess, however, seemed displeased the 



vii ] THE CITIZEN OF THE WOULD.— BEAU NASH. 01 

whole evening, and when he came to the table where she 
was playing, bid him, ' Stand farther, an ugly devil, for 
she hated the sight of him.' But her grace afterwards 
having a run of good luck called Nash to her. ' Come,' 
says she, ' I will be friends with you, though yon are a 
fool ; and to let you see I am not angry, there is ten 
guineas more for your charity. But this I insist oh, that 
neither my name nor the sum shall be mentioned.' ' 

At the ripe age of eighty-seven the " beau of three 
generations" breathed his last (1761) ; and, though he 
had fallen into poor ways, there were those alive who re- 
membered his former greatness, and who chronicled it in 
a series of epitaphs and poetical lamentations. " One 
thing is common almost with all of them," says Gold- 
smith, " and that is that Venus, Cnpid, and the Graces 
are commanded to weep, and that Bath shall never find 
such another." These effusions are forgotten now : and 
so would Beau "Nash be also but for this biography, 
which, no doubt meant merely for the book-market of 
the day, lives and is of permanent value by reason of the 
charm of its style, its pervading humor, and the vivacity 
of its descriptions of the fashionable follies of the eight- 
eenth century. Nullum fere genus scribendi non tetigit. 
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. Who but Goldsmith 
could have written so delightful a book about such a 
poor creature as Beau Nash ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE ARREST. 



It was no doubt owing to Newbery that Goldsmith, 
after his return to London, was induced to abandon, tem- 
porarily or altogether, his apartments in Wine-Office 
Court, and take lodgings in the house of a Mrs. Flem- 
ing, who lived somewhere or other in Islington. New- 
bqry had rooms in Canonbury House, a curious old 
building that still exists ; and it may have occurred to 
the publisher that Goldsmith, in this suburban district, 
would not only be nearer him for consultation and so 
forth, but also might pay more attention to his duties 
than when he was among the temptations of Fleet Street. 
Goldsmith was working industriously in the service of 
Newbery at this time (1763-4) ; in fact, so completely 
was the bookseller in possession of the hack, that Gold- 
smith's board and lodging in Mrs. Fleming's house, ar- 
ranged for at £50 a year, was paid by Newbery himself. 
Writing prefaces, revising new editions, contributing 
reviews — this was the sort of work he undertook, with 
more or less content, as the equivalent of the modest 
sums Mr. Newbery disbursed for him or handed over as 
pocket-money. In the midst of all this drudgery he was 
now secretly engaged on work that aimed at something 
higher than mere payment of bed and board. The 



vi ri.] THE ARREST. 63 

smooth lines of the Traveller were receiving* further pol- 
ish ; the gentle-natured Vicar was writing his simple, 
quaint, tender story. And no doubt Goldsmith was 
spurred to try something better than hack-work by the 
associations that he was now forming, chiefly under the 
wise and benevolent friendship of Johnson. 

Anxious always to be thought well of, he was now be- 
ginning to meet people whose approval was worthy of 
being sought. He had been introduced to Reynolds. 
He had become the friend of Hogarth. He had even 
made the acquaintance of Mr. Boswell, from Scotland. 
Moreover, he had been invited to become one of the 
original members of the famous Club of which so much 
lias been written ; his fellow-members being Reynolds, 
Johnson, Burke, Hawkins, Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, 
and Dr. Nugent. It is almost certain that it was at 
Johnson's instigation that he had been admitted into this 
choice fellowship. Long before either the Traveller or 
the Vicar had been heard of, Johnson had perceived the 
literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth fig- 
ure of this Irishman, and was anxious to impress on 
others Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. 
In the minute record kept by Boswell of his first evening 
with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern, we find Johnson say- 
ing, " Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now 
have as an author, and lie is a very worthy man too. 
He has been loose in his principles, but he is coming 
right." Johnson took walks with Goldsmith ; did him 
the honor of disputing with him on all occasions ; bought 
a copy of the Life of Nash when it appeared — an un- 
usual compliment for one author to pay another, in their 
day or in ours ; allowed him to call on Miss Williams, 
the blind old lady in Bolt Court ; and generally was his 



C4 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

friend, counsellor, and champion. Accordingly, when 
Mr. Boswell entertained the great Cham to supper at the 
Mitre — a sudden quarrel with his landlord having made it 
impossible for him to order the banquet at his own house 
■ — he was careful to have Dr. Goldsmith of the company. 
His guests that evening were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies 
(the actor and bookseller who had conferred on Boswell 
the invaluable favor of an introduction to Johnson), Mr. 
Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who 
deserves our gratitude because it was his inopportune 
patriotism that provoked, on this very evening, the mem- 
orable epigram about the high-road leading to England. 
" Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not got over his 
envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old 
pensioner in Bolt Court, " as usual, endeavored with too 
much eagerness to shine, and disputed very warmly with 
Johnson against the well-known maxim of the British 
constitution, ' The king can do wrong.' " It was a dis- 
pute not so much about facts as about phraseology ; and, 
indeed, there seems to be no great warmth in the ex- 
pressions used on either side. Goldsmith affirmed that 
" what was morally false could not be politically true ;" 
and that, in short, the king could by the misuse of his 
regal power do wrong. Johnson replied, that, in such a 
case, the immediate agents of the king were the persons 
to be tried and punished for the offence. i ' The king, 
though he should command, cannot force a judge to con- 
demn a man unjustly ; therefore it is the judge whom we 
prosecute and punish." But when he stated that the 
king " is above every thing, and there is no power by 
which he can be tried," he was surely forgetting an im- 
portant chapter in English history. " What did Crom- 
well do for his country ?" he himself asked, during his 



viii.] THE ARREST. 65 

subsequent visit to Scotland, of <>l.l Auehinleck, lios 
well's father. " God, Doctor," replied the vile Whig, 
" he gar red kings ken they had a lith in their necks." 

For some time after this evening Goldsmith drops out 
of Bos well's famous memoir ; perhaps the compiler was 
not anxious to give him too much prominence. They 
had not liked each other from the outset. Bos well, 
vexed by the greater intimacy of Goldsmith with John- 
son, called him a blunderer, a feather-brained person, 
and described his appearance in no nattering terms. 
Goldsmith, on the other hand, on being asked who was 
this Scotch cur that followed Johnson's heels, answered, 
" He is not a cur : you are too severe — he is only a bur. 
Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has 
the faculty of sticking." Boswell would probably have 
been more tolerant of Goldsmith as a rival, if he could 
have known that on a future day he was to have Johnson 
all to himself — to carry him to remote wilds and exhibit 
him as a portentous literary phenomenon to Highland 
lairds. It is true that Johnson, at an early period of his 
acquaintance with Boswell, did talk vaguely about a trip 
to the Hebrides ; but the young Scotch idolater thought 
it was all too good to be true. The mention of Sir 
James Macdonald, says Boswell, " led us to talk of the 
Western Islands of Scotland, to visit which he expressed 
a wish that then appeared to me a very romantic fancy, 
w r hich I little thought would be afterwards realized. He 
told me that his father had put Martin's account of those 
islands into his hands when he was very young, and that 
he was highly pleased with it ; that he was particularly 
struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the High 
Church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock ; a 
circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his 
4 



00 GOLDSMITH. [chai\ 

attention." Unfortunately Goldsmith not only disap- 
pears from the pages of Boswell's biography at this time, 
but also in great measure from the ken of his compan- 
ions. He was deeply in debt ; no doubt the fine clothes 
he had been ordering from Mr. Filby in order that he 
might/' shine" among those notable persons, had some- 
thing to do with it ; he had tried the patience of the 
booksellers ; and he had been devoting a good deal of 
tim to work not intended to elicit immediate payment. 
The most patient endeavors to trace out his changes of 
lodgings, and the fugitive writings that kept him in daily 
bread, have not been very successful. It is to be pre- 
sumed that Goldsmith had occasionally to go into hiding 
to escape from his creditors, and so was missed from his 
familiar haunts. We only reach daylight again, to find 
Goldsmith being under threat of arrest from his land- 
lady ; and for the particulars of this famous affair it is 
necessary to return to Bos well. 

Boswell was not in London at that time ; but his ac- 
count was taken down subsequently from Johnson's nar- 
ration ; and his accuracy in other matters, his extraordi- 
nary memory, and scrupulous care, leave no doubt in the 
mind that his version of the story is to be preferred to 
those of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins. We may 
take it that these are Johnson's own words : "I re- 
ceived one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that 
he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to 
come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon 
as possible.- I sent him a guinea, and promised to come 
to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was 
dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for 
his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I per- 
ceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had 



vtit.] THE ARREST. 07 

got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. 1 put 
the cork into the bottle, desired he would* be calm, and 
began to talk to him of the means by which he might be 
extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready 
for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into 
it, and saw its merit ; told the landlady I should soon 
return ; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for 
£60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he dis- 
charged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a 
high tone for having used him so ill. ' ' 

We do not know who this landlady was — it cannot now 
be made out whether the incident occurred at Islington, 
or in the rooms that Goldsmith partially occupied in the 
Temple ; but even if Mrs. Fleming be the landlady in 
question, she was deserving neither of Goldsmith's rating 
nor of the reprimands that have been bestowed upon her 
by later writers. Mrs. Fleming had been exceedingly 
kind tc Goldsmith. Again and again in her bills we find 
items significantly marked £0 0$. Od. And if her ac- 
counts with her lodger did get hopelessly into arrear ; 
and if she was annoyed by seeing him go out in fine 
clothes to sup at the Mitre ; and if, at length, her 
patience gave way, and she determined to have her rights 
in one way or another, she was no worse than landladies 
— who are only human beings, and not divinely ap- 
pointed protectresses of genius — ordinarily are. Mrs. 
Piozzi says that when Johnson came back with the 
money, Goldsmith " called the woman of the house 
directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in mer- 
riment." This would be a dramatic touch ; but, after 
Johnson's quietly corking the bottle of Madeira, it is 
more likely that no such thing occurred ; especially as 
Bos well quotes the statement as an " extreme inaccuracy." 



68 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

The novel which Johnson had taken away and sold to 
Francis Newbery, a nephew of the elder bookseller, was, 
as every one knows, the Vicar of Wakefield. That Gold- 
smith, amidst all his pecuniary distresses, should have re- 
tained this piece in his desk, instead of pawning or 
promising- it to one of his bookselling patrons, points to 
but one conclusion — that he was building high hopes on 
it, and was determined to make it as good as lay within 
his power. Goldsmith put an anxious finish into all his 
better work ; perhaps that is the secret of the graceful 
ease that is now apparent in every line. Any young 
writer who may imagine that the power of clear and con- 
cise literary expression comes by nature, cannot do better 
than study, in Mr. Cunningham's big collection of Gold- 
smith's writings, the continual and minute alterations 
which the author considered necessary even after the first 
edition — sometimes when the second and third editions 
— had been published. Many of these, especially in the 
poetical works, were merely improvements in sound as 
suggested by a singularly sensitive ear, as when he al- 
tered the line 

" Amidst the ruin, heedless of the dead," 

which had appeared in the first three editions of the 
Traveller, into 

" There in the ruin, heedless of the dead," 

which appeared in the fourth. But the majority of the 
omissions and corrections were prompted by a careful 
taste, that abhorred every thing redundant or slovenly. 
It has been suggested that when Johnson carried off the 
Vicar of Wakefield to Francis Newbery, the manuscript 
was not quite finished, but had to be completed after- 
wards. There was at least plenfy of time for that. 



viii.] THE ARREST. 69 

Newbery does not appear to have imagined that he had 
obtained a prize in the lottery of literature. He paid the 
£60 for it — clearly on the assurance of the great father 
of learning of the day, that there was merit in the little 
story — somewhere about the end of 1764 ; but the talc 
was not issued to the public until March, 1766. " And, 
sir," remarked Johnson to Boswell, with regard to the 
sixty pounds, "a sufficient price, too, when it was sold ; 
for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as 
it afterwards was, by his Traveller ; and the bookseller 
had such faint hopes of profit by his bargain, that he 
kept the manuscript by him a long time, and did not 
publish it till after the Traveller had appeared. Then, 
to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money." 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE TRAVELLER. 



This poem of the Traveller, the fruit of much secret 
labor and the consummation of the hopes of many years, 
was lying completed in Goldsmith's desk when the inci- 
dent of the arrest occurred ; and the elder Newbery had 
undertaken to publish it. Then, as at other times, John- 
son lent this wayward child of genius a friendly hand. 
He read over the proof-sheets for Goldsmith ; was so 
kind as to put in a line here or there where he thought 
fit ; and prepared a notice of the poem for the Critical 
Review. The time for the appearance of this new claim- 
ant for poetical honors was propitious. " There was 
perhaps no point in the century, ' ' says Professor Mas- 
son, " when the British Muse, such as she had come to 
be, was doing less, or had so nearly ceased to do any 
thing, or to have any good opinion of herself, as pre- 
cisely about the year 1764. Young was dying ; Gray 
was recluse and indolent ; Johnson had long given over 
his metrical experimentations on any except the most in- 
considerable scale ; Akenside, Armstrong, Smollett, and 
others less known, had pretty well revealed the amount 
of their worth in poetry ; and Churchill, after his fero- 
cious blaze of what was really rage and declamation in 
metre, though conventionally it was called poetry, was 



IX.] THE TRAVELLER. 71 

prematurely defunct. Into this lull came Goldsmith's 
short but carefully finished poem." "There has not 
been so fine a poem since Pope's time," remarked John- 
son to Boswell, on the very first evening after the return 
of young Auchinleck to London. It would have been no 
matter for surprise had Goldsmith dedicated this first 
work that he published under his own name to Johnson, 
who had for so long been his constant friend and ad- 
viser ; and such a dedication would have carried weight 
in certain quarters. But there was a finer touch in Gold- 
smith's thought of inscribing the book to his brother 
Henry ; and no doubt the public were surprised and 
pleased to find a poor devil of an author dedicating a 
work to an Irish parson with £40 a year, from whom he 
•could not well expect any return. It will be remembered 
that it was to this brother Henry that Goldsmith, ten 
years before, had sent the first sketch of the poem ; and 
now the wanderer, 

" Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," 

declares how his heart untravelled 

" Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. ' ' 

The very first line of the poem strikes a key-note — 
there is in it a pathetic thrill of distance, and regret, and 
longing ; and it has the soft musical sound that pervades 
the whole composition. It is exceedingly interesting to 
note, as has already been mentioned, how Goldsmith 
altered and altered these lines until he had got them full 
of gentle vowel sounds. Where, indeed, in the English 
language could one find more graceful melody than 
this ?— 



72 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

' ' The naked negro, panting at the line, 
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, 
Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, 
And thanks his gods for all the good they gave." 

It has been observed also that Goldsmith was the first to 
introduce into English poetry sonorous American — or 
rather Indian — names, as when he writes in this poem, 

" Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, 
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound ;" 

and if it be charged against him that he ought to have 
known the proper accentuation * of Niagara, it may be 
mentioned as a set-off that Sir Walter Scott, in dealing 
with his own country, mis-accentuated " Glenaladale, " 
to say nothing of his having made of Roseneath an 
island. Another characteristic of the Traveller is the ex- 
traordinary choiceness and conciseness of the diction, 
which, instead of suggesting pedantry or affectation, be- 
trays, on the contrary, nothing but a delightful ease and 
grace. 

The English people are very fond of good English ; 
and thus it is that couplets from the Traveller and the 
Deserted Village have come into the common stock of 
our language, and that sometimes not so much on 
account of the ideas they convey, as through their singu- 
lar precision of epithet and musical sound. It is enough 
to make the angels weep to find such a couplet as this, 

" Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose, 
Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes," 

murdered in several editions of Goldsmith's works by 
the substitution of the commonplace " breathes" for 
" breasts" and that after Johnson had drawn particular 
attention to the line by ({noting it in his Dictionary. 



ix.] THE TRAVELLER. 73 

Perhaps, indeed, it may be admitted that the literary 
charm of the Traveller is more apparent than the value 
of any doctrine, however profound or ingenious, which 
the poem was supposed to inculcate. We forget all 
about the "particular principle of happiness" possessed 
by each European state, in listening to the melody of the 
singer, and in watching the successive and delightful pic- 
tures that he calls up before the imagination. 

" As in those domes where Caesars once bore sway, 
Defaced by time, and tottering in decay, 
There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, 
The sheltW-seeking peasant builds his shed ; 
And, wondering man could want the larger pile, 
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile." 

Then notice the blaze of patriotic idealism that bursts 
forth when he comes to talk of England. What sort of 
England had he been familiar with when he was consort- 
ing with the meanest wretches — the poverty-stricken, the 
sick, and squalid — in those Fleet-street dens ? But it is 
an England of bright streams and spacious lawns of 
which he writes ; and as for the people who inhabit the 
favored land — 

" Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, 
With daring aims irregularly great ; 
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
I see the lords of human kind pass by." 

" Whenever I write any thing," Goldsmith had said, 
with a humorous exaggeration which Boswell, as usual, 
takes au serieux, " the public make a point to know 
nothing about it." But we have Johnson's testimony to 
the fact that the Traveller ' k brought him into high rep- 
utation." Xrt wonder. When the great Cham declares 
it to l>e the finest poem published since the time of Pope, 



74 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

we are irresistibly forced to think of the Essay on Man. 
What a contrast there is between that tedious and 
stilted effort and this clear burst of bird-song ! The 
Traveller, however, did not immediately become popu- 
lar. It was largely talked about, naturally, among Gold- 
smith's friends ; and Johnson would scarcely suffer any 
criticism of it. At a dinner given long afterwards at Sir 
Joshua Reynolds's, and fully reported by the invaluable 
Boswell, Reynolds remarked, " I was glad to hear 
Charles Fox say it was one of the finest poems in the 
English language." "Why were you glad?" said 
Langton. " You surely had no doubt of this before ?" 
Hereupon Johnson struck in : ii No ; the merit of the 
Traveller is so well established, that Mr. Fo % x's praise 
cannot augment it nor his censure diminish it." And he 
went on to say — Goldsmith having died and got beyond 
the reach of all critics and creditors some three or four 
years before this time — " Goldsmith was a man who, 
whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man 
could do. He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey ; 
and every year he lived would have deserved it better." 

Presently people began to talk about the new poem. 
A second edition was issued ; a third ; a fourth. It is 
not probable that Goldsmith gained any pecuniary benefit 
from the growing popularity of the little book ; but he 
had '* struck for honest fame," and that was now com- 
ing to him. He even made some slight acquaintance 
with " the great ;" and here occurs an incident which is 
one of many that account for the love that the English 
people have for Goldsmith. It appears that Hawkins, 
calling one day on the Earl of Northumberland, found 
the author of the Traveller waiting in the outer room, in 
response to an invitation. Hawkins, having finished his 



ix.] THE TRAVELLER. 75 

own business, retired, but lingered about until the inter- 
view between Goldsmith and his lordship was over, hav- 
ing some curiosity about the result. Here follows Gold- 
smith's report to Hawkins : " His lordship told me he 
had read my poem, and was much delighted with it ; 
that he was going to be Lord-lieutenant of Ireland ; and 
that, hearing that I was a native of that country, he 
should be glad to do me any kindness." " What did 
you answer ?" says Hawkins, no doubt expecting to hear 
of some application for pension or post. ' ' Why, ' ' said 
Goldsmith, " I could say nothing but that I had a 
brother there, a clergyman, that stood in need of help" 
— and then he explained to Hawkins that he looked to 
the booksellers for support, and was not inclined to place 
dependence on the promises of great men. " Thus did 
this idiot in the affairs of the world," adds Hawkins, 
with a fatuity that is quite remarkable in its way, " trifle 
with his fortunes, and put back the hand that was held 
out to assist him ! Other offers of a like kind he either 
rejected or failed to improve, contenting himself with the 
patronage of one nobleman, whose mansion afforded him 
the delights of a splendid table and a retreat for a few 
days from the metropolis." It is a great pity we have 
not a description from the same pen of Johnson's insolent 
ingratitude in flinging the pair of boots downstairs. 



CHAPTER X. 

MISCELLANEOUS WRITING. 

But one pecuniary result of this growing fame was a 
joint offer on the part of Griffin and Newbery of £20 for 
a selection from his printed essays ; and this selection was 
forthwith made and published, with a preface written for 
the occasion. Here at once we can see that Goldsmith 
takes firmer ground. There is an air of confidence — of 
gayety, even — in his address to the public ; although, as 
usual, accompanied by a whimsical mock-modesty that is 
extremely odd and effective. " Whatever right I have 
to complain of the public," he says, " they can, as yet, 
have no just reason to complain of me. If I have writ- 
ten dull Essays, they have hitherto treated them as dull 
Essays. Thus far we are at least upon par, and until 
they think fit to make me their humble debtor by praise, 
I am resolved not to lose a single inch of my self-import- 
ance. Instead, therefore, of attempting to establish a 
credit amongst them, it will perhaps be wiser to apply to 
some more distant correspondent ; and as my drafts are 
in some danger of being protested at home, it may not 
be imprudent, upon this occasion, to draw my bills upon 
Posterity. 

" Mr. Posterity, 

" Sir : Nine hundred and ninety-nine years after sight 
hereof pay the bearer, or order, a thousand pounds' worth 



x.] MISCELLANEOUS WRITING, 77 

of praise, free from all deductions whatsoever, it being a 
commodity that will then be very serviceable to him, and 
place it to the account of, etc." 

The lull is not yet due ; but there can in the meantime 
be no harm in discounting it so far as to say that these 
Essays deserve very decided praise. They deal with all 
manner of topics, matters of fact, matters of imagina- 
tion, humorous descriptions, learned criticisms ; and 
then, whenever the entertainer thinks he is becoming 
dull, he suddenly tells a quaint little story and walks off 
amidst the laughter he knows be lias produced. It is not 
a ver}^ ambitious or sonorous sort of literature ; but it 
was admirably fitted for its aim — the passing- of the im- 
mediate hour in an agreeable and fairly intellectual way. 
One can often see, no doubt, that these Essays are occa- 
sionally written in a more or less perfunctory fashion, the 
writer not being moved by much enthusiasm in his sub- 
ject ; but even then a quaint literary grace seldom fails 
to atone, as when, writing about the English clergy, and 
complaining that they do not sufficiently in their ad- 
dresses stoop to mean capacities, he says : kt Whatever 
may become of the higher orders of mankind, who are 
generally possessed of collateral motives to virtue, the 
vulgar should be particularly regarded, whose behavior in 
civil life is totally hinged upon their hopes and fears. 
Those who constitute the basis of the great fabric of so- 
ciety should be particularly regarded ; for in policy, as 
in architecture, ruin is most fatal when it begins from 
the bottom." There was, indeed, throughout Gold 
smith's miscellaneous writing much more common-sense 
than might have been expected from a writer who was 
supposed to have none. 



•78 GOLDSMITH. [cha**. 

As regards liis chance criticisms on dramatic and poet- 
ical literature, these are generally found to be incisive and 
just ; while sometimes they exhibit a wholesome disre- 
gard of mere tradition and authority. " Milton's trans- 
lation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha," he says, for example, 
" is universally known and generally admired, in our 
opinion much above its merit." If the present writer 
might for a moment venture into such an arena, he would 
express the honest belief that that translation is the very 
worst translation that Avas ever made of any thing. But 
there is the happy rendering of simplex munditiis, which 
counts for much. 

By this time Goldsmith had also written his charming 
ballad of Edwin and Angelina, which was privately 
" printed for the amusement of the Countess of North- 
umberland," and which afterwards appeared in the Vicar 
of Wakefield. It seems clear enough that this quaint 
and pathetic piece was suggested by an old ballad begin- 
ning, 

' ' Gentle heardsman, tell to me, 
Of curtesy I thee pray, 
Unto the towne of Walsingham 
Which is the right and ready way," 

which Percy had shown to Goldsmith, and which, 
patched up, subsequently appeared in the Reliques. But 
Goldsmith's ballad is original enough to put aside all the 
discussion about plagiarism which was afterwards started. 
In the old fragment the weeping pilgrim receives direc- 
tions from the herdsman, and goes on her way, and we 
hear of her no more ; in Edivin and Angelina the forlorn 
and despairing maiden suddenly finds herself confronted 
by the long-lost lover whom she had so cruelly used. 
This is the dramatic touch that reveals the hand of the 



x.] MISCELLANEOUS WRITING. 7<t 

artist. And hero again it is curious to note the care with 
which Goldsmith repeatedly revised his writings. The 
ballad originally ended with these two stanzas : 

" Here amidst sylvan bowers we'll rove, 
From lawn to woodland stray ; 
Blest as the songsters of the grove, 
And innocent as they. 

" To all that want, and all that wail, 
Our pity shall be given, 
And when this life of love shall fail, 
We'll love again in heaven.'' 

But subsequently it must have occurred to the author 
that, the dramatic disclosure once made, and the lovers 
restored to each other, any lingering over the scene only 
weakened the force of the climax ; hence these stanzas 
were judiciously excised. It may be doubted, however, 
whether the original version of the last couplet, 

" And the last sigh that rends the heart 
Shall break thy Edwin's too," 

was improved by being altered into 

" The sigh that rends thy constant heart 
Shall break thy Edwin's too." 

Meanwhile Goldsmith had resorted to hack-work 
again ; nothing being expected from the Vicar of Wake- 
field, now lying in Newbery's shop, for that had been 
paid for, and his expenses were increasing, as became his 
greater station. In the interval between the publication 
of the Traveller and of the Vicar, he moved into 'better 
chambers in Garden Court ; he hired a man-servant, he 
blossomed out into very fine clothes. Indeed, so effec- 
tive did his first suit seem to be — the purple silk small- 
clothes, the scarlet roquelaure, the wig, sword, and gold- 



80 GOLDSMITH. [chap. x.] 

headed cane — that, as Mr. Forster says, he " amazed his 
friends with no less than three similar snits, not less ex- 
pensive, in the next six months. ' ' Part of this display 
was no doubt owing to a suggestion from Reynolds that 
Goldsmith, having a medical degree, might just as well 
add the practice of a physician to his literary work, to 
magnify his social position. Goldsmith, always willing 
to please his friends, acceded ; but his practice does not 
appear to have been either extensive or long-continued. 
It is said that he drew out a prescription for a certain 
Mrs. Sidebotham which so appalled the apothecary that 
he refused to make it up ; and that, as the lady sided 
with the apothecary, he threw up the case and his pro- 
fession at the same time. If it was money Goldsmith 
wanted, he was not likely to get it in that way ; he had 
neither the appearance nor the manner fitted to humor 
the sick and transform healthy people into valetudinari- 
ans. If it was the esteem of his friends and popularity 
outside that circle, he was soon to acquire enough of 
both. On the 27th March, 1766, fifteen months after the 
appearance of the Traveller •, the Vicar of Wakefield was 
published. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

Thf Vicar of Wakefield, considered structurally, fol- 
lows the lines of the Book of Job. You take a good 
man, overwhelm him with successive misfortunes, show 
the pure flame of his soul burning in the midst of the 
darkness, and then, as the reward of his patience and 
fortitude and submission, restore him gradually to happi- 
ness, with even larger flocks and herds than before. 
The machinery by which all this is brought about is, in 
the Vicar of Wakefield, the weak part of the story. 
The plot is full of wild improbabilities ; in fact, the ex- 
pedients by which all the members of the family are 
brought together and made happy at the same time, are 
nothing short of desperate. It is quite clear, too, that 
the author does not know what to make of the episode of 
Olivia and her husband ; they are allowed to drop 
through ; we leave him playing the French horn at a re- 
lation's house ; while she, in her father's home, is sup- 
posed to be unnoticed, so much are they all taken up 
with the rejoicings over the double wedding. It is very 
probable that when Goldsmith began the story he had no 
very definite plot concocted ; and that it was only when 
the much-persecuted Vicar had to be restored to happi- 
ness, that he found the entanglements surrounding him, 



82 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

and had to make frantic efforts to break through them. 
But, be that as it may, it is not for the plot that people 
now read the Vicar of Wakefield ; it is not the intrica- 
cies of the story that have made it the delight of the 
world. Surely human nature must be very much the 
same when this simple description of a quiet English 
home went straight to the heart of nations in both hemi- 
spheres. 

And the wonder is that Goldsmith of all men should 
have produced such a perfect picture of domestic life. 
What had his own life been but a moving about between 
garret and tavern, between bachelor's lodgings and 
clubs ? Where had he seen — unless, indeed, he looked 
back through the mist of years to the scenes of his child- 
hood — all this gentle government, and wise blindness ; 
all this affection, and consideration, and respect ? There 
is as much human nature in the character of the Vicar 
alone as would have furnished any fifty of the novels of 
that day, or of this. Who has not been charmed by his 
sly and quaint humor, by his moral dignity and simple 
vanities, even by the little secrets he reveals to us of his 
paternal rule. " ' Ay,' returned I, not knowing well 
what to think of the matter, ' heaven grant they may be 
both the better for it this day three months ! ' This was 
one of those observations I usually made to impress my 
wife with an opinion of my sagacity ; for if the girls 
succeeded, then it was a pious wish fulfilled ; but if any 
thing unfortunate ensued, then it might be looked on as 
a prophecy." We know how Miss Olivia was answered, 
when, at her mother's prompting, she set up for being 
well skilled in controversy : 

" ' Why, my dear, what controversy can she have 
read ? ' cried I. ' It does not occur to me that I ever 



xr.j THE VICAH OK WAKEFIELD. 88 

put such books into her hands : you certainly overrate 
Iter merit. ' — ' Indeed, papa,' replied Olivia, 'she does 
not ; I have read a great deal of controversy. I have 
read the disputes between Thwackum and Square ; the 
controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the sav- 
age ; and I am now employed in reading the controversy 
in Religious Courtship.' — ' Very well,' cried I, ' that's a 
good girl ; I find you are perfectly qualified for making 
converts, and so go help your mother to make the goose- 
berry pic.' " 

It is with a great gentleness that the good man re- 
minds his wife and daughters that, after their sudden loss 
of fortune, it does not become them to wear much 
finery. " The first Sunday, in particular, their behavior 
served to mortify me. I had desired my girls the pre- 
ceding night to be dressed early the next day ; for I al- 
ways loved to be at church a good while before the rest 
of the congregation. They punctually obeyed my direc- 
tions ; but when we were to assemble in the morning at 
breakfast, down came my wife and daughters, dressed 
out in all their former splendor ; their hair plastered up 
with pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains 
bundled up in a heap behind, and rustling at every 
motion. 1 could not help smiling at their vanity, par- 
ticularly that of my wife, from whom I expected more 
discretion. In this exigence, therefore, my only re- 
source was to order my son, with an important air, to 
call our coach. The girls were amazed at the com- 
mand ; but 1 repeated it with more solemnity than be- 
fore. ' Surely, my dear, you jest,' cried my wife : k we 
can walk it perfectly well : we want no coach to carry us 
now.'—' You mistake, child,' returned I, ' we* do want a 
roach ; for if we walk to church in this trim, the very 



84 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

children in the parish will hoot after us.' — l Indeed./ re- 
plied my wife, ' I always imagined that my Charles was 
fond of seeing his children neat and handsome about 
him. ' — ' Yon may be as neat as you please, ' interrupt- 
ed I, * and I shall love you the better for it ; but all 
this is not neatness, but frippery. These rufflings, and 
pinkings, and patchings will only make us hated by 
all the wives of our neighbors. No, my children,' con- 
tinued I, more gravely, ' those gowns may be altered into 
something of a plainer cut ; for finery is very unbecom- 
ing in us, who want the means of decency. I do not 
know whether such flouncing and shredding is becoming 
even in the rich, if we consider, upon a moderate calcu- 
lation, that the nakedness of the indigent world might be 
clothed from the trimmings of the vain. ' 

" This remonstrance had the proper effect : they went 
with great composure, that very instant, to change their 
dress ; and the next day I had the satisfaction of finding 
my daughters, at their own request, employed in cutting 
up their trains into Sunday waistcoats for Dick and Bill, 
the two little ones ; and, *(vhat was still more satisfac- 
tory, the gowns seemed improved by this curtailing.'" 
And again when he discovered the two girls making a 
wash for their faces : " My daughters seemed equally 
busy with the rest ; and I observed them for a good 
while cooking something over the fire. I at first sup- 
posed they were assisting their mother, but little Dick 
informed me in a whisper that they were making a wash 
for the face. Washes of all kinds I had a natural anti- 
pathy to ; for I knew that, instead of mending the com- 
plexion, they spoil it. I therefore approached my chair 
by sly degrees to the fire, and grasping the poker, as if it 
wanted mending, seemingly by accident overturned the 



xi.] THE YK'AR OF WAKEFIELD. 8f> 

whole composition, and it was too late to begin an- 
other. ' ' 

All this is done with snch a light, homely touch, that 
one gets familiarly to know these people without being 
aware of it. There is no insistance. There is no drag- 
ging you along by the collar ; confronting you with cer- 
tain figures ; and compelling you to look at this and 
study that. The artist stands by you, and laughs in his 
quiet way ; and you are laughing too, when suddenly 
you find that human beings have silently come into the 
void before you ; and you know them for friends ; and 
even after the vision has faded away, and the beautiful 
light and color and glory of romance-land have vanished, 
you cannot forget them. They have become part of 
your life ; you will take them to the grave with you. 

The story, as every one perceives, has its obvious 
blemishes. " There are an hundred faults in this 
Thing," says Goldsmith himself, in the prefixed Adver- 
tisement. But more particularly, in the midst of all the 
impossibilities taking place in and around the jail, when 
that chameleon-like deus ex machind, Mr. Jenkinson, 
winds up the tale in hot haste, Goldsmith pauses to put 
in a sort of apology. " Nor can I go on without a re- 
fiection," he says gravely, " on those accidental meet- 
ings, which, though they happen every day, seldom ex- 
cite our surprise but upon some extraordinary occasion. 
To what a fortuitous concurrence do we not owe every 
pleasure and convenience of our lives ! How many 
seeming accidents must unite before we can be clothed or 
fed ! The peasant must be disposed to labor, the shower 
must fall, the wind fill the merchant's sail, or numbers 
must want the usual supply." This is Mr. Thackeray's 
' ; simple rogue" appearing again in adult life. Cer- 



86 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

tainly, if our supply of food and clothing depended on 
such accidents as happened to make the Vicar's family 
happy all at once, there would be a good deal of shiver- 
ing and starvation in the world. Moreover it may be ad- 
mitted that on occasion Goldsmith's fine instinct deserts 
him ; and even in describing those domestic relations 
which are the charm of the novel, he blunders into the 
unnatural. When Mr. Burchell, for example, leaves the 
house in consequence of a quarrel with Mrs. Primrose, 
the Vicar questions his daughter as to whether she had 
received from that poor gentleman any testimony of his 
affection for her. She replies No ; but remembers to 
have heard him remark that he never knew a woman who 
could find merit in a man that was poor. "Such, my 
dear," continued the* Vicar, " is the common cant of all 
the unfortunate or idle. But I hope you have been 
taught to judge properly of such men, and that it would 
be even madness to expect happiness from one who has 
been so very bad an economist of his own. Your moth- 
er and I have now better prospects for you. The next 
winter, which you will probably spend in town, will give 
you opportunities of making a more prudent choice." 
Now it is not at all likely that a father, however anxious 
to have his daughter well married and settled, would ask 
her so delicate a question in open domestic circle, and 
would then publicly inform her that she was expected to 
choose a husband on her forthcoming visit to town. 

Whatever may be said about any particular incident 
like this, the atmosphere of the book is true. Goethe, 
to whom a German translation of the Vicar was read by 
Herder some four years after the publication in England, 
not only declared it at the time to be one of the best 
novels ever written, but again and again throughout Ms 



xr.| THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 87 

life reverted to the charm and delight with which he had 
made the acquaintance of the English " prose idyll," and 
took it for granted that it was a real picture of English 
life. Despite all the machinery of Mr. Jenkinson's 
schemes, who could doubt it ? Again and again there 
are recurrent strokes of such vividness and natural- 
ness that we yield altogether to the necromancer. Look 
at this perfect picture — of human emotion and outside 
nature — put in in a few sentences. The old clergyman, 
after being in search of his daughter, has found her, and 
is now — having left her in an inn — returning to his fam- 
ily and his home. " And now my heart caught new 
sensations of pleasure, the nearer I approached that 
peaceful mansion. As a bird that had been frighted 
from its nest, my affections outwent my haste, and hov- 
ered round my little fireside with all the rapture of ex- 
pectation. I called up the many fond things I had to 
say, and anticipated the welcome I was to receive. I 
already felt my wife's tender embrace, and smiled at the 
joy of my little ones. As I walked but slowly, the night 
waned apace. The laborers of the day were all retired to 
rest ; the lights were out in every cottage ; no sounds 
were heard but of the shrilling cock, and the deep- 
mouthed watch-dog at hollow distance. I approached 
my little abode of pleasure, and, before I was within a 
furlong of the place, our honest mastiff came running to 
welcome me." " The deep-mouthed watch-dog at hol- 
low distance" — what more perfect description of the 
stillness of night was ever given ? 

And then there are other qualities in this delightful 
Vicar of Wakefield than merely idyllic tenderness, and 
pathos, and sly humor. There is a firm presentation of 
the crimes and brutalities of the world. The pure light 



88 GOLDSMITH. [chai\ 

that shines within that domestic circle is all the brighter 
because of the black outer ring that' is here and there in- 
dicated rather than described. How could we appreciate 
all the simplicities of the good man's household, but for 
the rogueries with which they are brought in contact ? 
And although we laugh at Moses and his gross of green 
spectacles, and the manner in which the Vicar's wife and 
daughter are imposed on by Miss "Wilhelmina Skeggs and 
Lady Blarney, with their lords and ladies and their trib- 
utes to virtue, there is no laughter demanded of us when 
we find the simplicity and moral dignity of the Vicar 
meeting and beating the jeers and taunts of the aban- 
doned wretches in the prison. This is really a remark- 
able episode. The author was under the obvious tempta- 
tion to make much comic material out of the situation ; 
while another temptation, towards the goody-goody side, 
was not far off. But the Vicar undertakes the duty of 
reclaiming these castaways with a modest patience and 
earnestness in every way in keeping with his character ; 
while they, on the other hand, are not too easily moved 
to tears of repentance. His first efforts, it will be re- 
membered, were not too successful. " Their insensibil- 
ity excited my highest compassion, and blotted my own 
uneasiness from my mind. It even appeared a duty in- 
cumbent upon me to attempt to reclaim them. I re- 
solved, therefore, once more to return, and, in spite of 
their contempt, to give them my advice, and conquer 
them by my perseverance. Going, therefore, among 
them again, I informed Mr. Jenkinson of my design, at 
which he laughed heartily, but communicated it to the 
rest. The proposal was received with the greatest good- 
humor, as it promised to afford a new fund of entertain- 
ment to persons who had now no other resource for 



xi. J THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 89 

mirth but what could be derived from ridicule or de- 
bauchery. 

1 ' I therefore read them a portion of the service with a 
loud, unaffected voice, and found my audience perfectly 
merry upon the occasion. Lewd whispers, groans of 
contrition burlesqued, winking and coughing, alternately 
excited Jaughter. However, I continued with my natural 
solemnity to read on, sensible that what I did might 
mend some, but could itself receive no contamination 
from any. 

11 After reading, I entered upon my exhortation, 
which was rather calculated at first to amuse them than 
to reprove. I previously observed, that no other motive 
but their welfare could induce me to this ; that I was 
their fellow -prisoner, and now got nothing by preaching. 
I was sorry, I said, to hear them so very profane ; be- 
cause they got nothing by it, but might lose a great 
deal : ' For be assured, my friends,' cried I — * for you 
are my friends, however the world may disclaim your 
friendship — though you swore twelve thousand oaths in 
a day, it would not put one penny in your purse. Then 
what signifies calling every moment upon the devil, and 
courting his friendship, since you find how scurvily he 
uses you ? He has given you nothing here, you find, 
but a mouthful of oaths and an empty belly ; and, by the 
best accounts I have of him, he will give you nothing 
that's good hereafter. 

" ' If used ill in our dealings with one man, we natu- 
rally go elsewhere. Were it not worth your while, then, 
just to try how you may like the usage of another mas- 
ter, who gives you fair promises at least to come to 
him ? Surely, my friends, of all stupidity in the worm, 
his must be the greatest, who, after robbing a house, 
G o 



90 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

runs to the thief-takers for protection. And yet, how 
are you more wise ? You are all seeking comfort from 
one that has already betrayed you, applying to a more 
malicious being than any thief-taker of them all ; for 
they only decoy and then hang you ; but he decoys and 
hangs, and, what is worst of all, will not let you loose 
after the hangman has done. ' ♦ 

" When I had concluded, I received the compliments 
of my audience, some of whom came and shook me by 
the hand, swearing that I was a very honest fellow, and 
that they desired my further acquaintance. I therefore 
promised to repeat my lecture next day, and actually 
conceived some hopes of making a reformation here ; for 
it had ever been my opinion, that no man was past the 
hour of amendment, every heart lying open to the shafts 
of reproof, if the archer could but take a proper aim." 

His wife and children, naturally dissuading him from 
an effort which seemed to them only to bring ridicule 
upon him, are met by a grave rebuke ; and on the next 
morning he descends to the common prison, where, he 
says, he found the prisoners very merry, expecting his 
arrival, and each prepared to play some jail-trick on the 
Doctor. 

' ' There was one whose trick gave more universal pleas- 
ure than all the rest ; for, observing the manner in which 
I had disposed my books on the table before me, he very 
dexterously displaced one of them, and put an obscene 
jest-book of his own in the place. However, I took no 
notice of all that this mischievous group of little beings 
could do, but went on, perfectly sensible that what was 
ridiculous in my attempt would excite mirth only the first 
or second time, while what was serious would be perma- 



xi. \ THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 91 

nent. My design succeeded, and in less than six days 
some were penitent, and all attentive. 

*' It was now that I applauded my perseverance and ad- 
dress, at thus giving sensibility to wretches divested of 
every moral feeling, and now began to think of doing 
them temporal services also, by rendering their situation 
somewhat more comfortable. Their time had hitherto 
been divided between famine and excess, tumultuous riot 
and bitter repining. Their only employment was quarrel- 
ling among each other, playing at cribbage, and cutting to- 
bacco-stoppers. From this last mode of idle industry I 
took the hint of setting such as- choose to work at cutting- 
pegs for tobacconists and shoemakers, the proper wood 
being bought by a general subscription, and, when manu- 
factured, sold by my appointment ; so that each earned 
something every day — a trifle indeed, but sufficient to 
maintain him. 

li I did not stop here, but instituted fines for the pun- 
ishment of immorality, and rewards for peculiar industry. 
Thus, in less than a fortnight I had formed them into 
something social and humane, and had the pleasure of 
regarding myself as a legislator who had brought men 
from their native ferocity into friendship and obedi- 
ence. ' ' 

Of course, all this about jails and thieves was calcu- 
lated to shock the nerves of those who liked their litera- 
ture perfumed with rose-water. Madame Riccoboni, to 
whom Burke had sent the book, wrote to Garrick, " Le 
plaidoyer en f aveur des voleurs, des petits larrons, des 
gens de mauvaises moeurs, est fort eloigne de me plaire." 
Others, no doubt, considered the introduction of Miss 
Skeggs and Lady Blarney as "vastly low." But the 
carious thing is that the literary critics of the day seem 



92 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

to have been altogether silent about the book — perhaps 
they were " puzzled' ' by it, as Southey has suggested. 
Mr. Forster, who took the trouble to search the periodi- 
cal literature of the time, says that, " apart from bald 
recitals of the plot, not a word was said in the way of 
criticism about the book, either in praise or blame." 
The St. James's Chronicle did not condescend to notice 
its appearance, and the Monthly Review confessed frankly 
that nothing was to be made of it. The better sort of 
newspapers, as well as the more dignified reviews, con- 
temptuously left it to the patronage of Lloyd' s Evening 
Post, the London Chronicle, and journals of that class ; 
which simply informed their readers that a new novel, 
called the Vicar of Wakefield, had been published, that 
" the editor is Doctor Goldsmith, who has affixed his 
name to an introductory Advertisement, and that such 
and such were the incidents of the story." Even his 
friends, with the exception of Burke, did not seem to 
consider that any remarkable new birth in literature had 
occurred ; and it is probable that this was a still greater 
disappointment to Goldsmith, who was so anxious to be 
thought well of at the Club. However, the public took 
to the story. A second edition was published in May ; a 
third in August. Goldsmith, it is true, received no 
pecuniary gain from this success, for, as we have seen, 
Johnson had sold the novel outright to Francis New- 
bery ; but his name was growing in importance with the 
booksellers. 

There was need that it should, for his increasing ex- 
penses — his fine clothes, his suppers, his whist at the 
Devil Tavern — were involving him in deeper and deeper 
difficulties. How was he to extricate himself ? — or 
rather the <juestion that would naturally occur to Gold- 



XI.] THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 93 

smith was Low was he to continue that hand to mouth 
existence that had its compensations along with its trou- 
bles ? Novels like the Vicar of Wakefield are not writ- 
ten at a moment's notice, even though any Newbery, 
judging by results, is willing to double that £60 which 
Johnson considered to be a fair price for the story at the 
time. There was the usual resource of hack -writing ; 
and, no doubt, Goldsmith was compelled to fall back on 
that, if only to keep the elder Newbery, in whose debt 
he was, in a good humor. But the author of the Vicar 
of Wakefield may be excused if he looked round to see if 
there was not some more profitable work for him to turn 
his hand to. It was at this time that he began to tnink 
of writing a comedy. 



CHAPTER XTI. 



THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 



Amid much miscellaneous work, mostly of the compila- 
tion order, the play of the Good-natured Man began to 
assume concrete form ; insomuch that Johnson, always 
the friend of this erratic Irishman, had promised to write 
a Prologue for it. It is with regard to this prologue that 
Boswell tells a foolish and untrustworthy story about 
Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson had recently been honored by 
an interview with his Sovereign ; and the members of 
the Club were in the habit of flattering him by begging 
for a repetition of his account of that famous event. 
On one occasion, during this recital, Boswell relates, 
Goldsmith ' ' remained unmoved upon a sofa at some dis- 
tance, affecting not to join in the least in the eager curi- 
osity of the company. He assigned as a reason for his 
gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended 
Johnson had relinquished his purpose of furnishing him 
with a prologue to his play, with the hopes of which he 
had been flattered ; but it was strongly suspected that he 
was fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honor 
Doctor Johnson had lately enjoyed. At length the 
frankness and simplicity of his natural character pre- 
vailed. He sprang from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, 
and, in a kind of flutter, from imagining himself in the 






xn.] THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 95 

situation which he had just been hearing described, ex 
claimed, ' Well, you acquitted yourself in this conversa- 
tion better than I should have done ; for I should have 
bowed and stammered through the whole of it.' ' It is 
obvious enough that the only part of this anecdote which 
is quite worthy of credence is the actual phrase used by 
Goldsmith, which is full of his customary generosity and 
self -depreciation. All those " suspicions" of his envy of 
his friend may safely be discarded, for they are inert 1 
guesswork ; even though it might have been natural 
enough for a man like Goldsmith, conscious of his singu- 
lar and original genius, to measure himself against John- 
son, who was merely a man of keen perception and 
shrewd reasoning, and to compare the deference paid to 
Johnson with the scant courtesy shown to him/self. 

As a matter of fact, the Prologue was written by Dr. 
Johnson ; and the now complete comedy was, after some 
little arrangement of personal differences betw r een Gold- 
smith and Garrick, very kindly undertaken by Reynolds, 
submitted for Garrick 's approval. But nothing came of 
Reynolds's intervention. Perhaps Goldsmith resented 
Garrick's airs of patronage towards a poor devil of an 
author ; perhaps Garrick was surprised by the manner 
in which well-intentioned criticisms were taken ; at all 
events, after a good deal of shilly-shallying, the play was 
taken out of Garrick's hands. Fortunately, a project was 
just at this moment on foot for starting the rival theatre 
in Covent Garden, under the management of George Col- 
man ; and to Colman Goldsmith's play was forthwith 
consigned. The play was accepted ; but it was a long 
time before it was produced ; and in that interval it may 
fairly be presumed the res angustcc domi of Goldsmith did 
not become any more free and generous than before. It 



06 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

was in this interval that the elder Nevvbery died ; Gold- 
smith had one patron the less. Another patron who 
offered himself was civilly bowed to the door. This is 
an incident in Goldsmith's career which, like his inter- 
view with the Earl of Northumberland, should ever be 
remembered in his honor. The Government of the day 
were desirous of enlisting on their behalf the services of 
writers of somewhat better position than the mere libel- 
lers whose pens were the slaves, of anybody's purse ; and 
a Mr. Scott, a chaplain of Lord Sandwich, appears to 
have imagined that it would be worth while to buy Gold- 
smith. He applied to Goldsmith in due course ; and 
this is an account of the interview : " I found him in a 
miserable set of chambers in the Temple. I told, him my 
authority ; I told him I was empowered to pay most lib- 
erally for his exertions ; and, would you believe it ! he 
was so absurd as to say, ' I can earn as much as will sup- 
ply my wants without writing for any party ; the assist- 
ance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me. ' And I 
left him in his garret." Needy as he was, Goldsmith 
had too much self-respect to become a paid libeller and 
cutthroat of public reputations. 

On the evening of Friday, the 29th of January, 1768, 
when Goldsmith had now reached the age of forty, the 
comedy of The Good-natured Man was produced at Cov- 
ent Garden Theatre. The Prologue had, according to 
promise, been written by Johnson ; and a very singular 
prologue it was. Even Bos well was struck by the odd 
contrast between this sonorous piece of melancholy and 
the fun that was to follow. " The first lines of this Pro- 
logue," he conscientiously remarks, " are strongly char- 
acteristical of the dismal gloom of his mind ; which, in 
his case, as in the case of all who are distressed with the 



xii.] THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. <)? 

same malady of imagination, transfers fco others its own 
feelings. Who could suppose it was to introduce a com- 
edy, when Mr. Bensley solemnly began — 

" ' Pressed with the load of life, the weary mind 
Surveys the general toil of humankind ' ? 

But this dark ground might make Goldsmith's humot 
shine the more." When we come to the comedy itself, 
we find but little bright humor in the opening passages. 
The author is obviously timid, anxious, and constrained. 
There is nothing of the brisk, confident vivacity with 
which She Stoops to Conquer opens. The novice does 
not yet understand the art of making his characters ex- 
plain themselves ; and accordingly the benevolent uncle 
and honest Jarvis indulge in a conversation which, labo- 
riously descriptive of the character of young Honey- 
wood, is spoken " at " the audience. With the entrance 
of young Honeywood himself, Goldsmith endeavors to 
become a little more sprightly ; but there is still anxiety 
hanging over him, and the epigrams are little more than 
merely formal antitheses. 

" Jarvis. This bill from your tailor ; this from your mercer ; 
and this from the little broker in Crooked Lane. He says he 
has been at a great deal of trouble to get back the money you 
borrowed. 

" Hon. That I don't know ; but I'm sure we were at a great 
deal of trouble in getting him to lend it. 

" Jar. He has lost all patience. 

" Hon. Then he has lost a very good thing. 

"Jar. There's that ten guineas you were sending to the poor 
gentleman and his children in the Fleet. I believe that would 
stop his mouth, for a while at least. 

"Hon. Ay. Jarvis, but what will fill their mouths in the 
meantime?" 

This young Honevwood, the hero of the play, is, and 
5* 



98 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

remains throughout, a somewhat ghostly personage. He 
has attributes, but no flesh or blood. There is much 
more substance in the next character introduced — the in- 
imitable Croaker, who revels in evil forebodings and 
drinks deep of the luxury of woe. These are the two 
chief characters ; but then a play must have a plot. 
And perhaps it would not be fair, so far as the plot is 
concerned, to judge of The Good-natured Man merely as 
a literary production. Intricacies that seem tedious and 
puzzling on paper appear to be clear enough on the 
stage : it is much more easy to remember the history and 
circumstances of a person whom we see before us, than 
to attach these to a mere name — especially as the name is 
sure to be clipped down from Honeyivood to Hon. and 
from Leontine to Leon. However, it is in the midst of 
all the cross-purposes of the lovers that we once more 
come upon our old friend Beau Tibbs — though Mr. Tibbs 
is now in much better circumstances, and has been re- 
named by his creator Jack Lofty. Garrick had objected 
to the introduction of Jack, on the ground that he was 
only a distraction. But Goldsmith, whether in writing 
a novel or a play, was more anxious to represent human 
nature than to prune a plot, and paid but little respect to 
the unities, if only he could arouse our interest. And 
who is not delighted with this Jack Lofty and his 
" duchessy" talk — his airs of patronage, his mysterious 
hints, his gay familiarity with the great, his audacious 
lying ? 

" Lofty. Waller ? Waller ? Is he of the house ? 

" Mrs. Croaker. The modern poet of that name, sir. 

"Lof. Oh, a modern ! We men of business despise the mod- 
erns ; and as for the ancients, we have no time to read them. 
Poetry is a pretty thing enough for our wives and daughters ; 



xn.] THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 99 

hut not for us. Why now, hero T stand that know nothing of 
hooks. I say, Qiadam, T know nothing of hooks ; and yet, I 
believe, upon a land-carriage fishery, a stamp act, or a jag- 
lure, I can talk my two hours without feeling the want of 
them. 

"Mrs. Cro. The world is no stranger to Mr. Lofty's eminence 
in every capacity. 

"Lof. I vow to gad, madam, you make me blush. I'm noth- 
ing, nothing, nothing in the world ; a mere obscure gentleman. 
To be sure, indeed, one or two of the present ministers are 
pleased to represent me as a formidable man. I know they are 
pleased to bespatter me at all their little dirty levees. Yet, 
upon my soul, I wonder what they see in me to treat me so ! 
Measures, not men, have always been my mark ; and I vow, 
by all that's honorable, my resentment has never done the 
men, as mere men, any manner of harm — that is, as mere 
men. 

" Mrs. Cro. "What importance, and yet what modesty ! 

"Lof. Oh, if you talk of modesty, madam, there, I own, I'm 
accessible to praise : modesty is my foible : it was so the Duke 
of Brentford used to say of me. ' I love Jack Lofty, ' he used 
to say : ' no man has a finer knowledge of things ; quite a 
man of information ; and when he speaks upon his legs, 
by the Lord he's prodigious, he scouts them ; and yet all 
men have their faults ; too much modesty is his,' says his 
grace. 

" Mrs. Cro. And yet, I dare say, you don't want assurance 
when you come to solicit for your friends. 

" Lof. Oh, there indeed I'm in bronze. Apropos ! I have 
just been mentioning Miss Richland's case to a certain person- 
age ; w T e must name no names. When I ask, I am not to be 
put off, madam. No, no, I take my friend by the button. A 
line girl, sir ; great justice in her case. A friend of mine — 
borough interest — business must be done, Mr. Secretary. — I 
say, Mr. Secretary, her business must be done, sir. That's my 
way, madam. 

" Mrs. Cro. Bless me ! you said all this to the Secretary of 
State, did you ? 

" Lof. I did not say the Secretary, did I ? Well, curse it, 



100 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

since you liave found me out, I will pot deny it. It was to the 
Secretary. ' ' 

Strangely enough, what may now seem to some of us 
the very best scene in the Good-natured Man — the 
scene, that is, in which young Honeywood, suddenly 
finding Miss Richland without, is compelled to dress up 
the two bailiffs in possession of his house and introduce 
them to her as gentlemen friends — was very nearly damn- 
ing the play on the first night of its production. The pit 
was of opinion that it was " low ;" and subsequently the 
critics took up the cry, and professed themselves to be so 
deeply shocked by the vulgar humors of the bailiffs that 
Goldsmith had to cut them out. But on the opening 
night the anxious author, who had been rendered nearly 
distracted by the cries and hisses produced by this scene, 
was somewhat reassured when the audience began to 
laugh again over the tribulations of Mr. Croaker. To 
the actor who played the part he expressed his warm 
gratitude when the piece was over ; assuring him that he 
had exceeded his own conception of the character, and 
that " the fine comic richness of his coloring made it 
almost appear as new to him as to any other person in the 
house." 

The new play had been on the whole favorably re- 
ceived ; and, when Goldsmith went along afterwards to 
the Club, his companions were doubtless not at all sur- 
prised to find him in good spirits. He was even merrier 
than usual, and consented to sing his favorite ballad 
about the Old Woman tossed in a Blanket. But those 
hisses and cries were still rankling in his memory ; and 
he himself subsequently confessed that he was " suffer- 
ing horrid tortures." Nay, when the other members of 
the Club had gone, leaving him and Johnson together, 



xii.] THIS GOOD-NATURED MAN. 101 

lie ' ' burst out a-crying, and even swore by that he 

would never write again." When Goldsmith told this 
story in after-days, Johnson was naturally astonished ; 
perhaps — himself not suffering much from an excessive 
sensitiveness — he may have attributed that little burst of 
hysterical emotion to the excitement of the evening in- 
creased by a glass or two of punch, and determined 
therefore never to mention it. " All which, Doctor," 
he said, " I thought had been a secret between you and 
ine ; and I am sure I would not have said any thing about 
it for the world." Indeed there was little to cry over, 
either m the first reception of the piece or in its subse- 
quent fate. With the offending bailiffs cut out, the com- 
edy would seem to have been very fairly successful. The 
proceeds of three of the evenings were Goldsmith's pay- 
ment ; and in this manner he received £400. Then 
Griffin published the play ; and from this source Gold- 
smith received an additional £100 ; so that altogether he 
was very well paid for his work. Moreover he had ap- 
pealed against the judgment of the pit and the dramatic 
critics, by printing in the published edition the bailiff 
scene which had been removed from the stage ; and the 
Monthly Review was so extremely kind as to say that 
" the bailiff and his blackguard follower appeared intol- 
erable on the stage, yet we are not disgusted with them 
in the perusal." Perhaps we have grown less scrupulous 
since then ; but at all events it would be difficult for any- 
body nowadays to find any thing but good-natured fun 
in that famous scene. There is an occasional " damn," 
it is true ; but then English officers have always been 
permitted that little playfulness, and these two gentlemen 
were supposed to lk serve in the Fleet ;" while if they 
had been particularly refined in their speech and manner, 



102 GOLDSMITH. [chap, xii.] 

how could the author have aroused Miss Richland's sus- 
picions ? It is possible that the two actors who played 
the bailiff and his follower may have introduced some 
vulgar ' ' gag' ; into their parts ; but there is no warranty 
for anv thing of the kind in the play as we now read it. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY. 

The appearance of the Good-natured Man ushered in 
a halcyon period in Goldsmith's life. The Traveller and 
the Vicar had gained for him only reputation : this new 
comedy put £500 in his pocket. Of course that was too 
big a sum for Goldsmith to have about him long. Four- 
fifths of it he immediately expended on the purchase and 
decoration of a set of chambers in Brick Court, Middle 
Temple ; with the remainder he appears to have begun a 
series of entertainments in this new abode, which were 
perhaps more remarkable for their mirth fhan their deco- 
rum. There was no sort of frolic in which Goldsmith 
would not indulge for the amusement of his guests ; he 
would sing them songs ; he would throw his wig to the 
ceiling ; he would dance a minuet* And then they had 
cards, forfeits, blind-man's-buff, until Mr. Blackstone, 
then engaged on his Commentaries in the rooms below, 
was driven nearly mad by the uproar. These parties 
would seem to have been of a most nondescript character 
— chance gatherings of any obscure authors or actors 
whom he happened to meet ; but from time to time there 
were more formal entertainments, at which* Johnson, 
Percy, and similar distinguished persons were present. 
Moreover, Dr. Goldsmith himself was much asked out 



104 GOLDSMITH. |chap. 

to dinner too ; and so, not content with the " Tyrian 
bloom, satin grain and garter, blue-silk breeches," which 
Mr. Filby had provided for the evening of the production 
of the comedy, he now had another suit " lined with 
silk, and gold buttons," that he might appear in proper 
guise. Then he had his airs of consequence too. This 
was his answer to an invitation from Kelly, who was his 
rival of the hour : " I would with pleasure accept your 
kind invitation, but to tell you the truth, my dear boy, 
my Traveller has found me a home in so many places, 
that I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see. 
To-day I dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Dr. 
Nugent, and the next day with Topham Beauclerc ; but 
I'll tell you what I'll do for you, I'll dine with you on 
Saturday. ' ' Kelly told this story as against Goldsmith ; 
but surely there is not so much ostentation in the reply. 
Directly after Tristram Shandy was published, Sterne 
found himself fourteen deep in dinner engagements : 
why should not the author of the Traveller and the Vicar 
and the Good-natured Man have his engagements also ? 
And perhaps it was but right that Mr. Kelly, who was 
after all only a critic and scribbler, though he had writ- 
ten a play which was for the moment enjoying an unde- 
served popularity, shoflld be given to understand that Dr. 
Goldsmith was not to be asked to a hole-and-corner chop 
at a moment's notice. To-day he dines with Mr. 
Burke ; to-morrow with Dr. Nugent ; the day after with 
Mr. Beauclerc. If you wish to have the honor of his 
company, you may choose a day after that ; and then, 
with his new wig, with his coat of Tyrian bloom and 
blue-silk breeches, with a smart sword at his side, his 
gold-headed cane hi his hand, and his hat under his 
elbow, he will present himself in due course. Dr. Gold- 



xin. 1 GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY. 105 

smith is announced, and makes liis grave bow : this is 
the man of genius about whom all the town is talking ; 
the friend of Burke, of Reynolds, of Johnson, of Ho- 
garth ; this is not the ragged Irishman who was some 
time ago earning a crust by running errands for an apoth- 
ecary. 

Goldsmith's grand airs, however, were assumed but 
seldom ; and they never imposed on anybody. His ac- 
quaintances treated him with a familiarity which testified 
rather to his good-nature than to their good taste. Now 
and again, indeed, he was prompted to resent this 
familiarity ; but the effort Mas not successful. In the 
4k high jinks" to which he good-humoredly resorted for 
the entertainment of his guests he permitted a freedom 
which it was afterwards not very easy to discard ; and as 
he was always ready to make a butt of himself for the 
amusement of his friends and acquaintances, it came to 
be recognized that anybody was allowed to play off a 
joke on u Goldy." The jokes, such of them as have 
been put on record, are of the poorest sort. The horse- 
collar is never far off. One gladly turns from these dis- 
mal humors of the tavern and the club to the picture of 
Goldsmith's enjoying what he called a "Shoemaker's 
Holiday" in the company of one or two chosen inti- 
mates. Goldsmith, baited and bothered by the wits of a 
public-house, became a different being when he had 
assumed the guidance of a small party of chosen friends 
bent on having a day's frugal pleasure. We are in- 
debted to one Cooke, a neighbor of Goldsmith's in the 
Temple, not only for a most interesting description of 
one of those shoemaker's holidays, but also for the 
knowledge that Goldsmith had even now begun writing 
the Deserted Village^ which was not published till 1770 ; 
H 



106 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

two years later. Goldsmith, though he could turn out 
plenty of manufactured stuff for the booksellers, worked 
slowly at the special story or poem with which he meant 
to " strike for honest fame.'" This Mr. Cooke, calling 
on him one morning, discovered that Goldsmith had that 
day written these ten lines of the Deserted Village : 

' ' Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 
How often have T loitered o'er thy green, 
Where humble happiness endeared each scene ! 
How often have I paused on every charm, 
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, 
The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 
The decent church, that topt the neighboring hill, 
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, 
For talking age and whispering lovers made ! ' ' 

" Come," said he, " let me tell you this is no bad morn- 
ing's work ; and now, my dear boy, if you are not better 
engaged, I should be glad to enjoy a shoemaker's holiday 
with you." "A shoemaker's holiday," continues the 
writer of these reminiscences, * ' was a day of great festivity 
to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in the following inno- 
cent manner : Three or four of his intimate friends ren- 
dezvoused at his chambers to breakfast about ten o'clock in 
the morning ; at eleven they proceeded by the City Road 
and through the fields to Highbury Barn to dinner ; 
about six o'clock in the evening they adjourned to White 
Conduit House to drink tea ; and concluded by supping 
at the Grecian or Temple Exchange coffee-house or at the 
Globe in Fleet Street. There was a very good ordinary 
of two dishes and pastry kept at * Highbury Barn about 
this time at tenpence per head, including a penny to the 
waiter ; and the company generally consisted of literary 
characters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had 



xilt.] GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY. 107 

left off trade. The whole expenses of the day's fete 
never exceeded a crown, and oftencr were from three- 
and-sixpence to four shillings ; for which the party ob- 
tained good air and exercise, good living, the example of 
simple manners, and good conversation." 

It would have been well indeed for Goldsmith had he 
been possessed of sufficient strength of character to re- 
main satisfied with these simple pleasures, and to have 
lived the quiet and modest life of a man of letters on 
such income as he could derive from the best work he 
could produce. But it is this same Mr. Cooke who gives 
decisive testimony as to Goldsmith's increasing desire t© 
" shine" by imitating the expenditure of the great ; the 
natural consequence of which was that he only plunged 
himself into a morass of debt, advances, contracts for 
hack-work, and misery. " His debts rendered him at 
times so melancholy and dejected, that I am sure he felt 
himself a very unhappy man." Perhaps it was with 
some sudden resolve to flee from temptation, and grapple 
with the difficulties that beset him, that he, in conjunc- 
tion with another Temple neighbor, Mr. Bott, rented a 
cottage some eight miles down the Edgware Road ; and 
here he set to work on the History of fiome, which he 
was writing for Davies. Apart from this hack-work, 
now rendered necessary by his debt, it is probable that 
one strong inducement leading him to this occasional 
seclusion was the progress he might be able to make with 
the Deserted Village. Amid all his town gayeties and 
country excursions, amid his dinne.s and suppers and 
dances, his borrowings, and contracts, and the hurried 
literary produce of the moment, he never forgot what 
was due to his reputation as an English poet. The jour- 
nalistic bullies of the day might vent their spleeu and 



108 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

envy on him ; his best friends might smile at his conver- 
sational failures ; the wits of the tavern might put up the 
horse-collar as before ; but at least he had the consolation 
of his art. No one better knew than himself the value 
of those finished and musical lines he was gradually add- 
ing to the beautiful poem, the grace, and sweetness, and 
tender, pathetic charm of which make it one of the lit- 
erary treasures of the English people. 

The sorrows of debt were not Goldsmith's only trouble 
at this time. For some reason or other he seems to have 
become the especial object of spiteful attack on the part 
of the literary cutthroats of the day. And Goldsmith, 
though he might listen with respect to the wise advice of 
Johnson on such matters, was never able to cultivate 
Johnson's habit of absolute indifference to any thing that 
might be said or sung of him. "The Kenricks, Camp- 
bells, MacNicols, and Hendersons," says Lord Macaulay 
— speaking of Johnson, tk did their best to annoy him, in 
the hope that he would give them importance by answer- 
ing them. But the reader will in vain search his works 
for any allusion to Kcnriek or Campbell, to MacXicol or 
Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on vindicating the 
fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a 
detestable Latin hexameter — 

' MaxiQie, si tu vis, eupio contendere tecum.' 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had 
learned, both from his own observation and from literary 
history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of 
books in the public estimation is lixed, not by what is 
written about them, but by what is written in them ; and 
that an author whose works are likely to live is very 
nnwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose 



xiii. J GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY. 109 

works are certain to die. He always maintained that 
fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by 
heino- beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and which 
would soon fall if there were only one battledore. No 
saying was oftener in his mouth than that tine apoph- 
thegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down 
but by himself. ' ' 

It was not given to Goldsmith to feel " like the Monu- 
ment " on any occasion whatsoever. He was anxious to 
have the esteem of his friends ; he was sensitive to a 
degree ; denunciation or malice, begotten of envy that 
Johnson would have passed unheeded, wounded him to 
the quick. " The insults to which he had to submit," 
Thackeray wrote with a quick and warm sympathy, " are 
shocking to read of — slander, contumely, vulgar satire, 
brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and 
actions : he had his share of these, and one's anger is 
roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman 
insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that a creature, 
so very gentle, and weak, and full of love should have 
had to suffer so." Goldsmith's revenge, his defence of 
himself, his appeal to the public, were the Traveller, the 
Vicar of Wakefield, the Deserted, Village ; but these 
came at long intervals ; and in the meantime he had to 
bear with the anonymous malignity that pursued him as 
best he might. No doubt, when Burke was entertaining 
him at dinner, and when Johnson was openly deferring 
to him in conversation at the Club, and when Reynolds 
was painting his portrait, he could afford to forget Mr. 
Kenrick and the rest of the libelling clan. 

The occasions on which Johnson deferred to Goldsmith 
in conversation were no doubt few ; but at all events the 
bludgeon of the great Cham would appear to have come 



110 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

down less frequently on " honest Goldy" than on the 
other members of that famous coterie. It could come 
down heavily enough. "Sir," said an incautious per- 
son, " drinking drives away care, and makes us forget 
whatever is disagreeable. Would not you allow a man to 
drink for that reason ?" " Yes, sir," was the reply, 
11 if he sat next you." Johnson, however, was consider- 
ate towards Goldsmith, partly because of his affection for 
him, and partly because he saw under what disadvantages 
Goldsmith entered the lists. For one thing, the conver- 
sation of those evenings would seem to have drifted con- 
tinually into the mere definition of phrases. Now John- 
son had spent years of his life, during the compilation of 
his Dictionary, in doing nothing else but defining ; and, 
whenever the dispute took a phraseological turn, he had 
it all his own way. Goldsmith, on the other hand, was 
apt to become confused in his eager self-consciousness. 
" Goldsmith," said Johnson to Boswell, " should not be 
forever attempting to shine in conversation ; he has not 
temper for it, he is so much mortified when he fails. . . 
When he contends, if he gets the better, it is a very 
little addition to a man of his literary reputation : if 
he does not get the better, he is miserably vexed." 
Boswell, nevertheless, admits that Goldsmith was " often 
very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he en- 
tered the lists with Johnson himself, ' ' and goes on to tell 
how Goldsmith, relating the fable of the little fishes who 
petitioned Jupiter, and perceiving that Johnson was 
laughing at him, immediately said, " Why, Dr. Johnson, 
this is not so easy as you seem to think ; for if you were 
to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." 
Who but Goldsmith would have dared to play jokes on 
the sage ? At supper they have rumps and kidneys. 



xrn.] GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY. Ill 

The sage expresses his -approval oi" " the pretty little 
things ;" but profoundly observes that one must eat a 
good many of them before being satisfied. " Ay, hut 
how many of them,*' asks Goldsmith, " would reach to 
the moon ?" The sage professes his ignorance ; and, 
indeed, remarks that that would exceed even Goldsmith's 
calculations ; when the practical joker observes, " Why, 
one, sir, if it were long enough." Johnson was com- 
pletely beaten on this occasion. " Well, sir, I have de- 
served it. I should not have provoked so foolish an an- 
swer by so foolish a question.*' 

It was Johnson himself, moreover, who told the story 
of Goldsmith and himself being in Poets' Corner ; of his 
saying to Goldsmith, 

" Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis, " 

and of Goldsmith subsequently repeating the quotation 
when, having walked towards Fleet Street, they were 
confronted by the heads on Temple Bar. Even when 
Goldsmith was opinionated and wrong, Johnson's con- 
tradiction was in a manner gentle. ' ' If you put a tub 
full of blood into a stable, the horses are like to go 
mad, 1 ' observed Goldsmith. " I doubt that, " was John- 
son's reply. " Nay, sir, it is a fact well authenticated." 
Here Thrale interposed to suggest that Goldsmith should 
have the experiment tried in the stable ; but Johnson 
merely said that, if Goldsmith began making these ex- 
periments, he would never get his book written at all. 
Occasionally, of course, Goldsmith was tossed and gored 
just like another. " But, sir," he had ventured to say, 
in opposition to Johnson, " when people live together 
who have something as to which they disagree, and 
which they want to shun, they will be in the situation 



112 GOLDSMITH. [chap. xtii. 

mentioned in the story ol" Bluebeard, ' You may look 
into all the chambers but one. ' But we should have the 
greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of 
that subject." Here, according to Boswell, Johnson 
answered in a loud voice, " Sir, I am not saying that you 
could live in friendship with a man from whom you differ 
as to one point ; I am only saying that I could do it." 
But then again he could easily obtain pardon from the 
gentle Goldsmith for any occasional rudeness. One even- 
ing they had a sharp passage of arms at dinner ; and 
thereafter the company adjourned to the Club, where 
Goldsmith sat silent and depressed. " Johnson per- 
ceived this," says Boswell, " and said aside to some of 
us, ' I'll make Goldsmith forgive me ;' and then called 
to him in a loud voice, ' Dr. Goldsmith, something 
passed to-day where you and I dined : I ask your par- 
don. ' Goldsmith answered placidly, ' It must be much 
from you, sir, that I take ill.' And so at once the differ- 
ence was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, 
and Goldsmith rattled away as usual." For the rest, 
Johnson was the constant and doughty champion of 
Goldsmith as a man of letters. He would suffer no one 
to doubt the power and versatility of that genius which 
he had been amongst the first to recognize and encour- 
age. 

" Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic 
writer, or as an historian," he announced to an assem- 
blage of distinguished persons met together at dinner at 
Mr. Beauclerc's, " he stands in the first class." And 
there was no one living who dared dispute the verdict— 
at least in Johnson's hearing;. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



But it is time to return to the literary performances 
that gained for this uncouth Irishman so great an 
amount of consideration from the first men of his time. 
The engagement with Griffin about the History of 
Animated Nature was made at the beginninc; of 1*769. 
The work was to occupy eight volumes ; and Dr. Gold- 
smith was to receive eight hundred guineas for the com- 
plete copyright. Whether the undertaking was origi- 
nally a suggestion of Griffin's, or of Goldsmith's own, 
does not appear. If it was the author's, it was probably 
only the first means that occurred to him of getting an- 
other advance ; and that advance — £500 on account — he 
did actually get. But if it w?s the suggestion of the 
publisher, Griffin must have been a bold man. A writer 
whose acquaintance with animated nature was such as to 
allow him to make the " insidious tiger" a denizen of 
the backwoods of Canada, ' was not a very safe authority. 
But perhaps Griffin had consulted Johnson before mak- 
ing this bargain ; and we know that Johnson, though 
continually remarking on Goldsmith's extraordinary ig- 
norance of facts, was of opinion that the History of Ani- 

1 See Citizen of the World, Letter XVII. 
6 



114 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

mated Nature would be "as entertaining as a Persian 
tale." However, Goldsmith — no doubt after he had 
spent the five hundred guineas — tackled the work in ear- 
nest. When Boswell subsequently went out to call on 
him at another rural retreat he had taken on the Edgware 
Road, Boswell and Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, 
found Goldsmith from home ; " but, having a curi- 
osity to see his apartment, we went in and found curious 
scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall 
with a black-lead pencil." Meanwhile, this Animated 
Nature being in hand, the Roman History was pub- 
lished, and was very well received by the critics and by 
the public. " Goldsmith's abridgment," Johnson de- 
clared, " is better than that of Lucius Floras or Eutro- 
pius ; and I will venture to say that if you compare him 
with Yertot, in the same places of the Roman History, 
you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art 
of compiling, and of saying every thing he has to say in a 
pleasing manner. ' ' 

So thought the booksellers too ; and the success of the 
Roman History only involved him in fresh projects of 
compilation. By .an offer of £500 Davies induced him 
to lay aside for the moment the Animated Nature and 
begin " An History of England, from the Birth of the 
British Empire to the death of George the Second, in 
four volumes octavo." He also about this time under- 
took to write a Life of Thomas Parnell. Here, indeed, 
was plenty of work, and work promising good pay ; but 
the depressing thing is that Goldsmith should have been 
the man who had to do it. He may have done it better 
than any one else could have done — indeed, looking over 
the results of all that drudgery, we recognize now the hap- 
py turns of expression which were never long absent from 



xtv.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 115 

Goldsmith's prose-writing — but the world could well 
afford to sacrifice all the task-work thus got through for 
another poem like the Deserted Village or the Traveller. 
Perhaps Goldsmith considered he was making a fair com- 
promise when, for the sake of his reputation, he devoted 
a certain portion of his time to his poetical work, and 
then, to have money for fine clothes and high jinks, gave 
the rest to the booksellers. One critic, on the appear- 
ance of the Roman History, referred to the Traveller , 
and remarked that it was a pity that the " author of one 
of the best poems that has appeared since those of Mr. 
Pope, should not apply wholly to works of imagina- 
tion.'" We may echo that regret now; but Goldsmith 
would at the time have no doubt replied that, if he had 
trusted to his poems, he would never have been able to 
pay £400 for chambers in the Temple. In fact he said 
as much to Lord Lisburn at one of the Academy din- 
ners : " I cannot afford to court the draggle-tail muses, 
my Lord ; they would let me starve ; but by my other 
labors I can make shift to eat, and drink, and have good 
clothes. ' ' And there is little use in our regretting now 
that Goldsmith was not cast in a more heroic mould ; we 
have to take him as he is ; and be grateful for what he 
has left us. 

It is a grateful relief to turn from these booksellers' 
contracts and forced labors to the sweet clear note of 
singing that one finds in the Deserted Village. This 
poem, after having been repeatedly announced and as 
often withdrawn for further revision, was at last pub- 
lished on the 26th of May, 1770, when Goldsmith was in 
his forty-second year. The leading idea of it he had al- 
ready thrown out in certain lines in the Traveller : 



116 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

" Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore, 
Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore ? 
Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, 
Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste ? 
Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain, 
Lead stern depopulation in her train, 
And over fields where scattered hamlets rose 
In barren solitary pomp repose ? 
Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call 
The smiling long-frequented village fall ? 
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed, 
The modest matron, and the blushing maid, 
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, 
To traverse climes beyond the western main ; 
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, 
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound?" 

— and elsewhere, in recorded conversations of his, we 
find that he had somehow got it into his head that the 
accumulation of wealth in a country was the parent of all 
evils, including depopulation. We need not stay here to 
discuss Goldsmith's position as a political economist ; 
even although Johnson seems to sanction his theory in 
the four lines he contributed to the end of the poem. 
Nor is it worth while returning to that objection of Lord 
Macaulay's which has already been mentioned in these 
pages, further than to repeat that the poor Irish village 
in which Goldsmith was brought up, no doubt looked to 
him as charming as any Auburn, when he* regarded it 
through the softening and beautifying mist of years. It 
is enough that the abandonment by a number of poor 
people of the homes in which they and theirs have lived 
their lives, is one of the most pathetic facts in our civili- 
zation ; and that out of the various circumstances sur- 
rounding this forced migration Goldsmith has made one 
of the most graceful and touching poems in the English 



KiV.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 117 

language. It is clear bird-singing ; but there is a pa- 
thetic note in it. That imaginary ramble through the 
Lissoy that is far away has recalled more than his boyish 
sports ; it has made him look back over his own life — 
the life of an exile. 

" I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose : 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us stiD, 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 
Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
• And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 
And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue 
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return — and die at home at last. ' ' 

Who can doubt that it was of Lissoy he was thinking ? 
Sir Walter Scott, writing a generation ago, said that 
" the church which tops the neighboring hill," the mill 
and the brook were still to be seen in the Irish village ; 
and that even 

" The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade, 
For talking- age and whispering lovers made," 

had been identified by the indefatigable tourist, and was 
of course being cut to pieces to make souvenirs. But in- 
deed it is of little consequence whether we say that Au- 
burn is an English village, or insist that it is only Lissoy 
idealized, as long as the thing is true in itself. And we 
know that this is true : it is not that one sees the place 
as a picture, but that one seems to be breathing its very 
atmosphere, and listening to the various erios that thrill 
the " hollow silence. " 



118 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

" Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 
There, as I past with careless steps and slow, 
The mingling notes came softened from below ; 
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
The playful children just let loose from school, 
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, 
And the loud laugh that spake the vacant mind." 

Nor is it any romantic and impossible peasantry that 
is gradually brought before us. There are no Norvals in 
Lissoy. There is the old woman — Catherine Geraghty, 
they say, was her name — who gathered cresses in the 
ditches near her cabin. There is the village preacher 
whom Mrs. Hodson, Goldsmith's sister, took to be a 
portrait of their father ; but whom others have identified 
as Henry Goldsmith, and even as the uncle Contarine : 
they may all have contributed. And then comes Paddy 
Byrne. Amid all the pensive tenderness of the poem 
this description of the schoolmaster, with its strokes of 
demure humor, is introduced with delightful effect : 

" Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, 
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, 
The village master taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 
Full Avell they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper circling round 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. 
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, 
The love he bore to learning was in fault ; 



xiv. 1 THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 11«J 

The village all declared how much he knew : 
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too : 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge : 
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill ; 
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still ; 
While words of learned length and thundering sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; 
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew 
That one small head could carry all he knew. ' ' 

All this is so simple and natural that we cannot fail to 
believe in the reality of Auburn, or Lissoy, or whatever 
the village may be supposed to be. We visit the clergy- 
man's cheerful fireside ; and look in on the noisy school ; 
and sit in the evening in the ale-house to listen to tlia 
profound politics talked there. But the crisis comes. 
Auburn delenda est. Here, no doubt, occurs the least 
probable part of the poem. Poverty of soil is a common 
cause of emigration ; land that produces oats (when it 
can produce oats at all) three fourths mixed with weeds, 
and hay chiefly consisting of rushes, naturally discharges 
its surplus population as families increase ; and though 
the wrench of parting is painful enough, the usual result 
is a change from starvation to competence. It more 
rarely happens that a district of peace and plenty, such 
as Auburn was supposed to see around it, is depopulated 
to add to a great man's estate. 

" The man of wealth and pride 
Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 

His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ;" 



120 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

and so forth. This seldom happens ; but it does nap- 
pen ; and it has happened, in our own day, in England. 
It is within the last twenty years that an English land- 
lord, having faith in his riches, bade a village be re- 
moved and cast elsewhere, so that it should no longer be 
visible from his windows : and it was forthwith removed. 
But any solitary instance like this is not sufficient to sup- 
port tho theory that wealth and luxury are inimical to the 
existence of a hardy peasantry ; and so we must admit, 
after all, that it is poetical exigency rather than political 
economy that has decreed the destruction of the loveli- 
est village of the plain. Where, asks the poet, are the 
driven poor to find refuge, when even the fenceless com- 
mons are seized upon and divided by the rich ? In the 
great cities ? — 

'■ To see profusion that he must not share ; 
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined 
To pamper luxury and thin mankind." 

It is in this description of a life in cities that there occurs 
an often-quoted passage, which has in it one of the most 
perfect lines in English poetry : 

" Ah ! turn thine eyes 

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 

She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, 

Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; 

Now lost to all ; her friends, her virtue fled, 

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head. 

And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, 

When idly first, ambitious of the town, 

She left her wheel and robes of country brown." 

Goldsmith wrote in a pre-Wordsworthian age when, 



xiv.J THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 121 

even in the realms of poetry, a primrose was not much 
more than a primrose ; but it is doubtful whether, either 
before, during, or since Wordsworth's time, the senti- 
ment that the imagination can infuse into the common 
and familiar things around us ever received more happy 
expression than in the well-known line, 

" Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn." 
Xo one has as yet succeeded in defining accurately and 
concisely what poetry is ; but at all events this line is 
surcharged with a certain quality which is conspicuously 
absent in such a production as the JEssay on Man. An- 
other similar line is to be found further on in the descrip- 
tion of the distant scenes to which the proscribed people 
are driven : 

" Through torrid tracts with fainting; steps they go, 
Where wild Altama mar mars to their woe." 

Indeed, the pathetic side of emigration has never been so 
powerfully presented to us as in this poem : 

" When the poor exiles every pleasure past. 
Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last, 
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main, 
And shuddering still to face the distant deep, 
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep. 

* * * * * * * 

Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural virtues leave the land. 
Down where you anchoring vessel spreads the sail, 
That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 
Downward they move a melancholy band, 
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 
Contented toil, and hospitable care, 
And kind connubial tenderness are there ; 
And piety with wishes placed above, 
And steady loyally, and faithful love." 
1 6* 



122 0OLDSMITH. [chap. 

And worst of all, in this imaginative departure, we find 

that Poetry herself is leaving our shores. She is now to 

try her voice 

" On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side ;" 

and the poet, in the closing lines of the poem, bids her a 

passionate and tender farewell : 

" And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, 
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame 
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, 
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, 
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ; 
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 
Farewell, and oh ! where'er thy voice be tried, 
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side, 
Whether where equinoctial fervors glow, 
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, 
Redress the rigors of the inclement clime ; 
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain ; 
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain : 
Teach him, that states of native strength possest, 
Though very poor, may still be very blest ; 
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 
As ocean sweeps the labored mole away ; 
While self-dependent power can time defy, 
As rocks resist the billows and the sky." 

So ends this graceful, melodious, tender poem, the po- 
sition of which in English literature, and in the estima- 
tion of all who love English literature, has not been dis- 
turbed by any fluctuations of literary fashion. We may 
give more attention at the moment to the new experi- 
ments of the poetic method ; but we return only with re- 



xiv.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 12li 

dewed gratitude to the old familiar strain, not the least 
merit of which is that it has nothing about it of foreign 
tricks or graces. In English literature there is nothing 
more thoroughly English than these writings produced 
by an Irishman. And whether or not it was Paddy 
Byrne, and Catherine Geraghty, and the Lissoy ale-house 
that Goldsmith had in his mind when he was writing the 
poem, is not of much consequence : the manner and lan- 
guage and feeling are all essentially English ; so that we 
never think of calling Goldsmith any thing but an English 
poet. 

The poem met with great and immediate success. Of 
course every thing that Dr. Goldsmith now wrote was 
read by the public ; he had not to wait for the recom- 
mendation of the reviews ; but, in this case, even the re- 
views had scarcely any thing but praise in the welcome of 
his new book. It was dedicated, in graceful and ingeni- 
ous terms, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who returned the 
compliment by painting a picture and placing on the en- 
graving of it this inscription : ' ' This attempt to express 
a character in the Deserted Village is dedicated to Dr. 
Goldsmith by his sincere friend and admirer, Sir Joshua 
Reynolds." What Goldsmith got from Griffin for the 
poem is not accurately known ; and this is a misfortune, 
for the knowledge would have enabled us to judge 
whether at that time it was possible for a poet to court 
the draggle-tail muses without risk of starvation. But 
if fame were his chief object in the composition of the 
poem, he w T as sufficiently rewarded ; and it is to be sur- 
mised that by this time the people in Ireland — no longer 
implored to get subscribers — had heard of the proud po- 
sition won by the vagrant youth who had " taken the 
world for his pillow" some eighteen years before. 



124 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

That his own thoughts had sometimes wandered baok 
to the scenes and friends of his youth during this labor 
of love, we know from his letters. In January of this 
year, while as yet the Deserted Village was not quite 
through the press, he wrote to his brother Maurice ; and 
expressed himself as most anxious to hear all about the 
relatives from whom he had been so long parted. He 
has something to say about himself too ; wishes it to be 
known that the King has lately been pleased to make him 
Professor of Ancient History il in a Royal Academy of 
Painting which he has just established ;" but gives no 
very nourishing account of his circumstances. " Honors 
to one in my situation are something like ruffles to a man 
that wants a shirt. " However, there is some small leg- 
acy of fourteen or hfteen pounds left him by his uncle 
Contarine, which he understands to be in the keeping of 
his cousin Lawder ; and to this wealth he is desirous of 
foregoing all claim : his relations must settle how it may 
be best expended. But there is not a reference to his 
literary achievements, or the position won by them ; not 
the slightest yielding to even a pardonable vanity ; it is a 
modest, affectionate letter. The only hint that Maurice 
Goldsmith receives of the esteem in which his brother is 
held in London, is contained in a brief mention of John- 
son, Burke, and others as his friends. " I have sent my 
cousin Jenny a miniature picture of myself, as I believe 
it is the most acceptable present I can offer. I have or- 
dered it to be left for her at George Faulkenor's, folded 
in a letter. The face, you well know, is ugly enough ; 
but it is finely painted. I will shortly also send my 
friends over the Shannon some mezzotinto prints of my- 
self, and some more of my friends here, such as Burke, 
Johnson, Reynolds, and Colman. I believe I have writ- 



xiv.| THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 125 

ten an hundred letters to different friends in your coun- 
try, and never received an answer from any of them. I 
do not know how to account for this, or why they are 
unwilling to keep up for me those regards which I must 
ever retain for them." The letter winds up with an 
appeal for news, news, news. 



CHAPTER XV 



OCCASIONAL WRITINGS. 



Some two months after the publication of the Deserted 
Village, when its success had been well assured, Gold- 
smith proposed to himself the relaxation of a little Conti- 
nental tour ; and he was accompanied by three ladies, 
Mrs. Horneck and her two pretty daughters, who doubt- 
less took more charge of him than he did of them. This 
Mrs. Horneck, the widow of a certain Captain Horneck, 
was connected with Reynolds, while Burke was the guar- 
dian of the two girls ; so that it was natural that they 
should make the acquaintance of Dr. Goldsmith. A 
foolish attempt has been made to weave out of the rela- 
tions supposed to exist between the younger of the girls 
and Goldsmith an imaginary romance ; but there is not 
the slightest actual foundation for any thing of the kind. 
Indeed the best guide we can have to the friendly and 
familiar terms on which he stood with regard to the 
llornecks and their circle, is the following careless and 
jocular reply to a chance invitation sent him by the two 
sisters : 

' * Your mandate I got, 
You may all go to pot : 
Had your senses been right, 
You'd have sent before night ; 



xv.] OCCASIONAL WRITINGS. 127 

As I hope to be saved, 
I put off being shaved ; 
For I could not make bold, 
While the matter was cold, 
To meddle in suds. 
Or to put on my duds ; 
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt 
And Baker and his bit, 
And Kauffman beside. 
And the .Jessamy bride ; 
With the rest of the crew, 
The Reynoldses two, 
Little Comedy's face 
And the Captain in lace. 

Yet how can I when vext 

Thus stray from my text ? 

Tell each other to rue 

Your Devonshire crew, 

For sending so late 

To one of my state. 

But 'tis Reynolds's way 

From wisdom to stray, 

And Angelica's whim 

To be frolic like him. 
But, alas ! your good worships, how could they be wiser, 
When both have been spoiled in to-day's Advertiser ?" 

" The Jessamy Bride" was the pet nickname he had 
bestowed on the younger Miss Horneck — the heroine of 
the speculative romance just mentioned ; " Little Com- 
edy" was her sister ; " the Captain in lace" their brother, 
who was in the Guards. No doubt Mrs. Horneck and 
her daughters were very pleased to have with them on 
this Continental trip so distinguished a person as Dr. 
Goldsmith ; and he must have been very ungrateful if he 
was not glad to be provided with such charming compan- 



128 GOLDSMITH, [chap. 

ions. The story of the sudden envy he displayed of the 
admiration excited by the two handsome young English- 
women as they stood at a hotel- window in Lille, is so in- 
credibly foolish that it needs scarcely be repeated here ; 
unless to repeat the warning that, if ever anybody was so 
dense as not to see the humor of that piece of acting, one 
had better look with grave suspicion on every one of the 
stories told about Goldsmith's vanities and absurdities. 

Even with such pleasant companions, the trip to Paris 
was not every thing he had hoped. " I find," he wrote 
to Reynolds from Paris, " that travelling at twenty and 
at forty are very different things. I set out with all my 
confirmed habits about me, and can find nothing on the 
Continent so good as when 1 formerly left it. One of 
our chief amusements here is scolding at every thing we 
meet with, and praising every thing and every person we 
left at home. You may judge therefore whether your 
name is not frequently bandied at table among us. To 
tell you the truth, I never thought I could regret your 
absence so much, as our various mortifications on the 
road have often taught me to do. I could tell you of 
disasters and adventures without number, of our lying in 
barns, and of my being half poisoned with a dish of 
green peas, of our quarrelling with postilions and being 
cheated by our landladies, but I reserve all this for a 
happy hour which I expect to share with you upon my 
return." The fact is that although Goldsmith had seen 
a good deal of foreign travel, the manner of his making 
the grand tour in his youth was not such as to fit him for 
acting as courier to a party of ladies. However, if they 
increased his troubles, they also shared them ; and in 
this same letter he bears explicit testimony to the value 
of their companionship. " I will soon be among you, 



xv.] OCCASIONAL WRITINGS. 129 

better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was 
before. And yet I must say, that if any thing could 
make France pleasant, the very good women with whom 
I am at present would certainly do it. I could say more 
about that, but I intend showing them this letter before I 
send it away." Mrs. Horneck, Little Comedy, the Jes- 
samy Bride, and the Professor of Ancient History at the 
Royal Academy, all returned to London ; the last to re- 
sume his round of convivialities at taverns, excursions 
into regions of more fashionable amusement along with 
Reynolds, and task-work aimed at the pockets of the 
booksellers. 

It was a happy-go-lucky sort of life. We find him 
now showing off his fine clothes and his sword and wig 
at Ranelagh Gardens, and again shut up in his chambers 
compiling memoirs and histories in hot haste ; now the 
guest of Lord Clare, and figuring at Bath, and again de- 
lighting some small domestic circle by his quips and 
cranks ; playing jokes for the amusement of children, 
and writing comic letters in verse to their elders ; every- 
where and at all times merry, thoughtless, good-natured. 
And, of course, we find also his humorous pleasantries 
being mistaken for blundering stupidity. In perfect 
good faith Boswell describes how a number of people 
burst out laughing when Goldsmith publicly complained 
that he had met Lord Camden at Lord Clare's house in 
the country, " and he took no more notice of me than if 
I had been an ordinary man." Goldsmith's claiming to 
be a very extraordinary person was precisely a stroke of 
that humorous self-depreciation in which he was contin- 
ually indulging ; and the Jessamy Bride has left it on 
record that " on many occasions, from the peculiar man- 
ner of Jiis humor, and assumed frown of countenance, 



130 GOLDSMITH, [chap. 

what whs often uttered in jest was mistaken by those 
who did not know him for earnest. ' ' This would appear 
to have been one of those occasions. The company 
burst out laughing at Goldsmith's having made a fool of 
himself ; and Johnson was compelled to come to his res- 
cue. " Nay, gentlemen, Dr. Goldsmith is in the right. 
A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as 
Goldsmith ; and I think it is much against Lord Camden 
that he neglected him." 

Mention of Lord Clare naturally recalls the Haunch of 
Venison. Goldsmith was particularly happy in writing 
bright and airy verses ; the grace and lightness of his 
touch has rarely been approached. It must be con- 
fessed, how r ever, that in this direction he was somewhat 
of an Autolycus ; unconsidered trifles he freely appropri- 
ated ; but he committed these thefts with scarcely any 
concealment, and with the most charming air in the 
world. In fact some of the snatches of verse which he 
contributed to the Bee scarcely profess to be any thing 
else than translations, though the originals are not given. 
But who is likely to complain when we get as the result 
such a delightful piece of nonsense as the famous Elegy 
on that Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize, which has 
been the parent of a vast progeny since Goldsmith's 
time ? 

" Good people all, with one accord 
Lament for Madam Blaize, 
Who never wanted a good w r ord 
From those who spoke her praise. 

" The needy seldom passed her door, 
And always found her kind ; 
She freely lent to all the poor — 
Who left a pledge behind. 



w.l OCCASIONAL WRITINGS. i:;i 

' She strove the neighborhood to please, 
With manners wondrous winning ; 
And never followed wicked ways — 
Unless when she was sinning. 

" At church, in silks and satins new, 
With hoop of monstrous size, 
She never slumbered in her pew — 
But when she shut her eyes. 

" Her love was sought, I do aver, > 
By twenty beaux and more ; 
The king himself has followed her — 
When she has walked before. 

" But now her wealth and finery fled, 
Her hangers-on cut short all ; 
The doctors found, when she was dead — 
Her last disorder mortal. 

" Let us lament, in sorrow sore, 
For Kent Street well may say, 
That had she lived a twelvemonth more — 
She had not died to-day. " 

The Haunch of Venison, on the other hand, is a poet- 
ical letter of thanks to Lord Clare — an easy, jocular 
epistle, in which the writer has a cut or two at certain of 
his literary brethren. Then, as he is looking- at the veni- 
son, and determining not to send it to any such people as 
Hiffernan or Higgins, who should step in but our old 
friend Beau Tibbs, or some one remarkably like him in 
manner and speech ? — 

" While thus I debated, in reverie centred, 
An acquaintance, a friend as he called himself, entered ; 
An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he, 
And he smiled as he looked at the venison and me. 
1 What have we got here ? — Why this is good eating \ 
Your own, I suppose — or is it in waiting ? ' 



132 GOLDSMITH. [CHAr. xv.J 

' Why, whose should it be ? ' cried I with a flounce ; 

1 1 get these things often ' — but that was a bounce : 

' Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, 

Are pleased to be kind — but I hate ostentation. r 

' If that be the case then,' cried he, very gay, 

'I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. 

To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me ; 

No words — I insist on't — precisely at three ; 

We'll have Johnson, and Burke ; all the wits will be there ; 

My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. 

And now that I think on't, as I am a sinner ! 

We wanted this venison to make oul the dinner. 

What say you — a pasty ? It shall, and it must, 

And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust, 

Here, porter ! this venison with me to Mile End ; 

No stirring — I beg — my dear friend — my dear friend ! ' 

Thus, snatching his hat, he brushed off like the wind, 

And the porter and eatables followed behind." 

We need not follow the vanished venison — which did 
not make its appearance at the banquet any more than 
did Johnson or Burke — further than to say that if Lord 
Clare did not make it good to the poet he did not de- 
serve to have his name associated with such a clever and 
careless jeu d' esprit. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 

But the writing of smart verses could not keep Dr. 
Goldsmith alive, more especially as dinner-parties, Rane- 
lagh masquerades, and simflar diversions pressed heavily 
on his finances. When his History of England ap- 
peared, the literary cutthroats of the day accused him of 
having been bribed by the Government to betray the lib- 
erties of the people :' a foolish charge. What Gold- 
smith got for the English History was the sum originally 
stipulated for, and now no doubt all spent ; with a fur- 
ther sum of fifty guineas for an abridgment of the work. 
Then, by this time, he had persuaded Griffin to advance 
him the whole of the eight hundred guineas for the Ani- 
mated Nature, though he had only done about a third 
part of the book. At the. instigation of Newbery he 
had begun a story after the maimer of the Vicar of 
Wakefield ; but it appears that such chapters as he had 
written were not deemed to be promising ; and the un- 
dertaking was abandoned. The fact is, Goldsmith was 
now thinking of another method of replenishing his 
purse. The Vicar of Wakefield had brought "him little 

1 ' ' God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my 
head ; my whole aim being to make up a book of a decent size 
that, as Squire Richard says, ' would do no harm to nobody.' " 
-"Goldsmith to Langton, September, 1771. 



134 GOLDSMITH. [chat. 

but reputation ; the Good-natured Man had brought him 
£500. It was to the stage that he now looked for assist- 
ance out of the financial slough in which he was plunged. 
He was engaged in writing a comedy ; and that comedy 
was She Stoops to Conquer. 

In the Dedication to Johnson which was prefixed to 
this play on its appearance in type, Goldsmith hints that 
the attempt to write a comedy not of the sentimental 
older then in fashion, was a hazardous thing ; and also 
that Col man, who saw the piece in its various stages, was 
of this opinion too. Colman threw cold water on the 
undertaking from the very beginning. It was only ex- 
treme pressure on the part of Goldsmith's friends that in- 
duced — or rather compelled — him to accept the comedy ; 
and that, after he had kept the unfortunate author in the 
tortures of suspense for month after month. But al- 
though Goldsmith knew the danger, he was resolved to 
face it. He hated the sentimentalists and all their 
works ; and determined to keep his new comedy faithful 
to nature, whether people called it low or not. His ob- 
ject was to raise a genuine, hearty laugh ; not to write a 
piece for school declamation ; and he had enough confi- 
dence in himself to do the work in his own way. More- 
over he took the earliest possible opportunity, in writing 
this piece, of poking fun at the sensitive creatures who 
had been shocked by the " vulgarity" of The Good- 
natured Man. " Bravo ! Bravo !" cry the jolly com- 
panions of Tony Lumpkin, when that promising buckeen 
has finished his song at the Three Pigeons ; then follows 
criticism : 

" First Fellow. The squire has got spunk in him. 
" Second Fd. I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives 
us nothing that's low. 



xvi. I SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. L35 

" Third Fel. O damn any thing that's low, I cannot hear it. 

" Fourth Fel. The genteel tiling is the genteel thing any time : 
if so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly. 

" Third Fel. I likes the maxum of it. Master Muggins. What, 
though I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gen- 
tleman for all that. Ma} r this be my poison, if my bear ever 
dances but to the very genteelest of tunes; 'Water Parted,' 
or tli3 ' The Minuet in Ariadne.' " 

Indeed, Goldsmith, however lie might figure in soci- 
ety, was always capable of holding his own when he had 
his pen in his hand. And even at the outset of this 
comedy one sees how much he has gained in literary con- 
fidence since the writing of the Good-natured Man. 
Here there is no anxious stiffness at all ; but a brisk, free 
conversation, full of point that is not too formal, and yet 
conveying all the information that has usually to be 
crammed into a first scene. In taking as the ground- 
work of his plot that old adventure that had befallen him- 
self — his mistaking a squire's house for an inn — he was 
hampering himself with something that was not the less 
improbable because it had actually happened ; but we 
begin to forget all the improbabilities through the natu- 
ralness of the people to whom we are introduced, and the 
brisk movement and life of the piece. 

Fashions in dramatic literature may come and go ; but 
the wholesome good-natured fun of She Stoops to Con- 
quer is as capable of producing a hearty laugh now as it 
was when it first saw the light in Co vent Garden. Tony 
Lumpkin is one of the especial favorites of the theatre- 
going public ; and no wonder. With all the young 
cub's jibes and jeers, his impudence and grimaces, one 
has a sneaking love for the scapegrace ; we laugh with 
him, rather than at him ; how can we fail to enjoy those 
malevolent tricks of his when he so obviously enjoys 



136 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

them himself ? And Diggory — do we not owe an eter- 
nal debt of gratitude to honest Diggory for telling us 
about Ould Grouse in the gunroom, that immortal joke at 
which thousands and thousands of people have roared 
with laughter, though they never any one of them could 
tell what the story was about ? The scene in which the 
old squire lectures his faithful attendants on their man- 
ners and duties, is one of the truest bits of comedy on 
the English stage : 

" Mr, Hardcastle. But you're not to stand so, with your 
hands in your pockets. Take your hands from your pockets, 
Roger ; and from your head, you blockhead you. See how 
Diggory carries his hands. They're a little too stiff, indeed, 
but that's no great matter. 

"Diggory. Ay, mind how I hold them. I learned to hold my 
hands this way when I was upon drill for the militia. And so 
being upon drill 

' ' Hard. You must not be so talkative, Diggory. You must 
be all attention to the guests. You must hear us talk, and not 
think of talking ; you must see us drink, and not think of 
drinking ; you must see us eat, and not think of eating. 

"Dig. By the laws, your worship, that's parfectly uupos- 
sible. Whenever Diggory sees yeating going forward, ecod, 
he's always wishing for a mouthful himself. 

" Hard. Blockhead ! Is not a bellyful in the kitchen as good 
as a bellyful in the parlor ? Stay your stomach with that re- 
flection. 

" Dig. Ecod, I thank your worship, I'll make a shift to stay 
my stomach with a slice of cold beef in the pantry. 

"Hard. Diggory, you are too talkative. — Then, if I happen 
to say a good thing, or tell a good story at table, you must not 
all burst out a-laughing, as if you made part of the company. 

"Dig. Then ecod your worship must not tell the story of 
Ould Grouse in the gunroom ; I can't help laughing at that — 
lie ! he ! he ! — for the soul of me. We have laughed at that 
these twenty years — ha ! ha ! ha ! 

"Hard. Ha! ha! ha! The story is a good one. We'l, 



xvi.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 137 

honest Diggory, you may laugh at that— but stfll remember to 
be attentive. Suppose one of the company should call for a 
'lass of wine, how will you behave ? A glass of wine, sir, if 
you please (to Diggory).— Eh, why don't you move ? 

"Dig. Ecod, your worship, I never have courage till I see 
the eatables and drinkables brought upo' the table, and then 
I'm as bauld as a lion. 

" Hard. What, will nobody move ? 

" First Serv. I'm not to leave this pleace. 

" Second Serv. I'm sure it's no pleace of mine. 

" Third Serv. Nor mine, for sartain. 

" Big. Wauns, and I'm sure it canna be mine." 



No doubt all this is very " low" indeed ; and perl 
Mr. Colman may be forgiven for suspecting that the re- 
fined wits of the day would be shocked by these rude 
humors of a parcel of servants. But all that can be said 
in this direction was said at the time by Horace Walpole, 
in a letter to a friend of his ; and this criticism is so 
amusing in its pretence and imbecility that it is worth 
quoting at large. "Dr. Goldsmith has written a com- 
edy, ' ' says this profound critic, ' ' — no, it is the lowest 
of all farces ; it is not the subject I condemn, though 
very vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no 
moral, no edification of any kind — the situations, how- 
ever, are well imagined, and make one laugh in spite of 
the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms, and 
total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But 
what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are 
very low, and aim at low humor, not one of them says a 
sentence that is natural, or marks any character at all. ' ' 
Horace Walpole sighing for edification — from a Covent 
Garden comedy ! Surely, if the old gods have any 
laughter left, and if they take any notice of what is done 
in the literarv world here below, there must have 
K " 7 



138 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

rumbled through the courts of Olympus a guffaw of sar- 
donic laughter when that solemn criticism was put down 
on paper. 

Meanwhile Colman's original fears had developed into 
a sort of stupid obstinacy. He was so convinced that 
the play would not succeed, that he would spend no 
money in putting it on the stage ; while far and wide he 
announced its failure as a foregone conclusion. Under 
this gloom of vaticination the rehearsals were nevertheless 
proceeded with — the brunt of the quarrels among the 
players falling wholly on Goldsmith, for the manager 
seems to have withdrawn in despair ; while all the John- 
son confraternity were determined to do what they could 
for Goldsmith on the opening night. That was the 15th 
of March, 1773. His friends invited the author to din- 
ner as a prelude to the play ; Dr. Johnson was in the 
chair ; there was plenty of gayety. But this means of 
keeping up the anxious author's spirits was not very suc- 
cessful. Goldsmith's mouth, we are told by Reynolds, 
became so parched ' ' from the agitation of his mind, that 
he was unable to swallow a single mouthful." More- 
over, he could not face the ordeal of sitting through the 
play ; when his friends left the tavern and betook them- 
selves to the theatre, he went away by himself ; and was 
subsequently found walking in St. James's Park. The 
friend who discovered him there persuaded him that his 
presence in the theatre might be useful in case of an 
emergency ; and ultimately got him to accompany him 
to Covent Garden. When Goldsmith reached the the- 
atre, the fifth act had been begun. 

Oddly enough, the first thing he heard on entering the 
stage-door was a hiss. The story goes that the poor 
author was dreadfully frightened ; and that in answer to 



xvi. j SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 139 

a hurried question, Colman exelaimed, " Psha ! Doctor, 
don't be afraid of a squib, when we have been sitting 
these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder." If this was 
meant as a hoax, it was a cruel one ; if meant seriously, 
it was untrue. For the piece had turned out a great hit. 
From beginning to end of the performance the audience 
\v ere in a roar of laughter ; and the single hiss that Gold- 
smith unluckily heard was so markedly exceptional, that 
it became the talk of the town', and was variously attrib- 
uted to one or other of Goldsmith's rivals. Colman, 
too, suffered at the hands of the wits for his gloomy and 
falsified predictions ; and had, indeed, to beg Goldsmith 
to intercede for him. It is a great pity that Boswell was 
not in London at this time ; for then we might have had 
a description of the supper that naturally would follow 
the play, and of Goldsmith's demeanor under this new 
success. Besides the gratification, moreover, of his 
choice of materials being approved by the public, there 
was the material benefit accruing to him from the three 
' • author's nights. ' ' These are supposed to have produced 
nearly five hundred pounds — a substantial sum in those 
days. 

Boswell did not come to London till the second of 
April following ; and the first mention we find of Gold- 
smith is in connection with an incident which has its 
ludicrous as well as its regrettable aspect. The further 
success of She Stoops to Conquer was not likely to pro- 
pitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cutthroats that in- 
fested the journalism of that day. More especially was 
Kenrick driven mad with envy ; and so, in a letter ad- 
dressed to the London Packet, this poor creature deter- 
mined once more to set aside the judgment of the public, 
and show Or, Goldsmith in his true colors, The letter is 



140 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

a wretched production, full of personalities only fit for an 
angry washerwoman, and of rancor without point. But 
there was one passage in it that effectually roused Gold- 
smith's rage ; for here the Jessamy Bride was introduced 
as " the lovely H — k. " The letter was anonymous ; 
but the publisher of the print, a man called Evans, was 
known ; and so Goldsmith thought he would go and give 
Evans a beating. If he had asked Johnson's advice 
about the matter, he would no doubt have been told to 
pay no heed at all to anonymous scurrility — certainly not 
to attempt to reply to it with a cudgel. When Johnson 
heard that Foote meant to " take him off," he turned 
to Davies and asked him what was the common price of 
an oak stick ; but an oak stick in Johnson's hands and 
an oak stick in Goldsmith's hands were two different 
things. However, to the bookseller's shop the indignant 
poet proceeded, in company with a friend ; got hold of 
Evans ; accused him of having insulted a young lady by 
putting her name in his paper ; and, when the publisher 
would fain have shifted the responsibility on to the edi- 
tor, forthwith denounced him as a rascal, and hit him 
over the back with his cane. The publisher, however, 
was quite a match for Goldsmith ; and there is no saying 
how the deadly combat might have ended, had not a lamp 
been broken overhead, the oil of which drenched both 
the warriors. This intervention of the superior gods was 
just as successful as a Homeric cloud ; the fray ceased ; 
Goldsmith and his friend withdrew ; and ultimately an 
action for assault was compromised by Goldsmith's pay- 
ing fifty pounds to a charity. Then the howl of the 
journals arose. Their prerogative had been assailed. 
" Attacks upon private character were the most liberal ex- 
isting source of newspaper income," Mr. Forster writes ; 






xvi.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER, 141 

and so the pack turned with one cry on the unlucky poet. 
There was nothing of "the Monument" about poor 
Goldsmith ; and at last he was worried into writing a 
letter of defence addressed to the public. " He has in- 
deed done it very well," said Johnson to Boswell, " but 
it is a foolish thing well done." And further he re- 
marked, " Why, sir, I believe it is the first time lie has 
beat ; he may have been beaten before. This, sir, is a 
new plume to him.' J 



CHAPTER XVii. 

INCREASING DIFFICULTIES. THE END. 

The pecuniary success of She Stoops to Conquer did but 
little to relieve Goldsmith from those financial embarrass- 
ments which were now weighing' heavily on his mind. 
And now he had less of the old high spirits that had en- 
abled him to laugh off the cares of debt. His health be- 
came disordered ; an old disease renewed its attacks, and 
was grown more violent because of his long-continued 
sedentary habits. Indeed, from this point to the day of 
his death — not a long interval, either — we find little but 
a record of successive endeavors, some of them wild and 
hopeless enough, to obtain money anyhow. Of course 
lie went to the Club, as usual ; and gave dinner-parties ; 
and had a laugh or a song ready for the occasion. It is 
possible, also, to trace a certain growth of confidence in 
himself, no doubt the result of the repeated proofs of his 
genius he had put before his friends. It was something 
more than mere personal intimacy that justified the re- 
buke he administered to Reynolds, when the latter 
painted an allegorical picture representing the triumph of 
Beattie and Truth over Voltaire and Scepticism. " It 
very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, ' ' 
he said, ' ' to debase so high a genius as Voltaire before 



xvn.] INCREASING DIFFICULTIES— f II E END. 143 

so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his book will 
be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will last 
forever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture, 
to the shame of such a man as you. " He was aware, 
too, of the position lie had won for himself in English 
literature. He knew that people in after-days would ask 
about him ; and it was with no sort of unwarrantable 
vainglory that he gave Percy certain materials for a biog- 
raphy which he wished him to undertake. Hence the 
Percy Memoir. 

He was only forty-live when he made this request ;. 
and he had not suffered much from illness during his 
life ; so that there was apparently no grounds for imagin- 
ing that the end was near. But at this time Goldsmith 
began to suffer severe tits of depression ; and he grew 
irritable and capricious of temper — no doubt another re- 
sult of failing health. He was embroiled in disputes 
with the booksellers ; and, on one occasion, seems to 
have been much hurt because Johnson, who had been 
asked to step in as arbiter, decided against him. He was 
offended with Johnson on another occasion because of his 
sending away certain dishes at a dinner given to him by 
Goldsmith, as a hint that these entertainments were too 
luxurious for one in Goldsmith's position. It was prob- 
ably owing to some temporary feeling of this sort — per- 
haps to some expression of it on Goldsmith '^ part — that 
Johnson spoke of Goldsmith's " malice" towards him. 
Mrs. Thrale had suggested that Goldsmith would be the 
best person to write Johnson's biography. " The dog 
would write it best, to be sure," said Johnson, " but his 
particular malice towards me, and general disregard of 
truth, would make the book useless to all and injurious 
to my character." Of course it is always impossible to 



144 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

say what measure of jocular exaggeration there may not 
be in a chance phrase such as this : of the fact that there 
was no serious or permanent quarrel between the two 
friends we have abundant proof in Boswell's faithful 
pages. 

To return to the various endeavors made by Goldsmith 
and his friends to meet the difficulties now closing in 
around him, we find, first of all, the familiar hack-work. 
For two volumes of a History of Greece he had received 
from Griffin £250. Then his friends tried to get him a 
pension from the Government ; but this was definitely 
refused. An expedient of his own seemed to promise 
well at first. He thought of bringing out a Popular 
Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, a series of contribu- 
tions mostly by his friends, with himself as editor ; and 
among those who offered to assist him were Johnson, 
Reynolds, Burke, and Dr. Burney. But the booksellers 
were afraid. The project would involve a large expense ; 
and they had no high opinion of Goldsmith's business 
habits. Then he offered to alter The Good-natured 
Man for Garrick ; but Garrick preferred to treat with 
him for a new comedy, and generously allowed him to 
draw on him for the money in advance. This last help 
enabled him to go to Barton for a brief holiday ; but the 
relief was only temporary. On his return to London 
even his nearest friends began to observe the change in 
his manner. In the old days Goldsmith had faced 
pecuniary difficulties with a light heart ; but now, his 
health broken, and every avenue of escape apparently 
closed, he was giving way to despair. His friend Cra- 
dock, coming up to town, found Goldsmith in a most de- 
spondent condition ; and also hints that the unhappy 
author was trying to conceal the true state of affairs. 4 ' I 



xvii.l INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.— THE END. 145 

believe," says Cradock, " he died miserable, and that his 
friends were not entirely aware of his distress." 

And yet it was during this closing period of anxiety, 
despondency, and gloomy foreboding that the brilliant 
and humorous lines of Retaliation were written — that last 
scintillation of the bright and happy genius that was soon 
to be extinguished forever. The most varied accounts 
have been given of the origin of this jeu d 1 esprit ; and 
even Garrick's, which was meant to supersede and correct 
all others, is self-contradictory. For according to this 
version of the story, which was found among the Garrick 
papers, and which is printed in Mr. Cunningham's edi- 
tion of Goldsmith's works, the whole thing arose out 
of Goldsmith and Garrick resolving one evening at the 
St. James's Coffee-House to write each other's epitaph. 
Garrick's well-known couplet was instantly produced : 

, " Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll." 

Goldsmith, according to Garrick, either would not or 
could not retort at the moment ; " but went to work, 
and some weeks after produced the following printed 
poem, called Retaliation.'''' But Garrick himself goes on 
to say, li The following poems in manuscript were written 
by several of the gentlemen on purpose to provoke the 
Doctor to an answer, which came forth at last with great 
credit to him in Retaliation.'" The most probable version 
of the story, which may be pieced together from various 
sources, is that at the coffee-house named this business of 
writing comic epitaphs was started some evening or other 
by the whole company ; that Goldsmith and Garrick 
pitted themselves against each other ; that thereafter 
Goldsmith began as occasion served to write similar 



146 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

squibs about his friends, which were shown about as they 
were written ; that thereupon those gentlemen, not to be 
behindhand, composed more elaborate pieces in proof of 
their wit ; and that, finally, Goldsmith resolved to bind 
these fugitive lines of his together in a poem, which lie ■ 
left unfinished, and which, under the name of Retalia- 
tion, was published after his death. This hypothetical 
account receives some confirmation from the fact that the 
scheme of the poem and its component parts do not fit 
together well ; the introduction looks like an after- 
thought, and has not the freedom and pungency of a 
piece of improvisation. An imaginary dinner is de- 
scribed, the guests being Garrick, Reynolds, Burke, 
Cumberland, and the rest of them, Goldsmith last of all. 
More wine is called for, until the whole of his com- 
panions have fallen beneath the table : 

" Then, with chaos and blunders encircling my head, 
Let me ponder, and tell what I think of the dead." 

This is a somewhat clumsy excuse for introducing a 
§ ies of epitaphs ; but the epitaphs amply atone for it. 
That on Garrick is especially remarkable as a bit of char- 
acter-sketching ; its shrewd hints — all in perfect courtesy 
and good-humor — going a little nearer to the truth than 
is common in epitaphs of any sort : 

' ' Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can ; 
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man. 
As an actor, confessed without rival to shine : 
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line : 
Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, 
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 
Like an ill- judging beauty, his colors he spread, 
And beplastered with rouge his own natural red. 
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting ; 
'Twas only that, when he was off, lie was acting. 



Xvil] INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.— THE END. 1 \1 

With no reason on earth to go out of his way, 

He turned and he varied full ten times a day : 

Though seeure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick 

If they were not his own by finessing and trick ; 

He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, 

For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them hack. 

Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came ; 

And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame ; 

Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, 

Who peppered the highest was surest to please. 

But let us be candid, and speak out our mind : 

If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. 

Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and W r oodfalls so grave, 

What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave ! 

How did Grub Street re-echo the shouts that you raised, 

Wliile he was be-Rosciused, and you were bepraised. 

But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies, 

To act as an angel and mix with the skies : 

Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill 

Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will ; 

Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love, 

And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above." 

The truth is that Goldsmith, though he was ready to bl 
his " honest little man" when he received from him sixty 
pounds in advance for a comedy not begun, never took 
quite so kindly to Garrick as to some of his other 
friends. There is no pretence of discrimination at all, 
for example, in the lines devoted in this poem to Rey- 
nolds. All the generous enthusiasm of Goldsmith's Irish 
nature appears here ; he will admit of no possible rival to 
this especial friend of his : 

" Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, 
He has not left' a wiser or better behind." 

There is a tradition that the epitaph on Reynolds, end- 
ing with the unfinished line 

** By flattery unspoiled . 



148 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

■was Goldsmith's last piece of writing. One would like 
to believe that, in any case. 

Goldsmith had returned to his Edgware lodgings, and 
had, indeed, formed some notion of selling his chambers 
in the Temple, and living in the country for at least ten 
months in the year, when a sudden attack of his old dis- 
order drove him into town again for medical advice. He 
would appear to have received some relief ; but a nervous 
fever followed ; and on the night of the 25th March, 
1774, when he was but forty-six years of age, he took 
to his bed for the last time. At first he refused to re- 
gard his illness as serious, and insisted on dosing him- 
self with certain fever-powders from which he had re- 
ceived benefit on previous occasions ; but by and by as 
his strength gave way he submitted to the advice of the 
physicians who were in attendance on him. Day after 
day passed, his weakness visibly increasing, though, 
curiously enough, the symptoms of fever were gradually 
abating. At length one of the doctors, remarking to 
him that his pulse was in greater disorder than it should 
be from the degree of fever, asked him if his mind was 
at ease. " No, it is not," answered Goldsmith ; and 
these were his last words. Early in the morning of 
Monday, April 4th, convulsions set in ; these continued 
for rather more than an hour ; then the troubled brain 
and the sick heart found rest forever. 

When the news was carried to his friends, Burke, it is 
said, burst into tears, and Reynolds put aside his work 
for the day. But it does not appear that they had vis- 
ited him during his illness ; and neither Johnson, nor 
Reynolds, nor Burke, nor Garrick followed his body to 
the grave. It is true, a public funeral was talked of ; 
and, among others, Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick were 



xvii.] INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.— THE END. 149 

to have carried the pall ; but this was abandoned ; and 
Goldsmith was privately buried in the ground of the 
Temple Church on the 9th of April, 1774. Strangely 
enough, too, Johnson seems to have omitted all mention 
of Goldsmith from his letters to Boswell. It was not 
until Boswell had written to him, on June 24th, " You 
have said nothing to me about poor Goldsmith," that 
Johnson, writing on July 4th, answered as follows : 
" Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith there is little to be told, 
more than the papers have made public. He died of a 
fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of 
mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his re- 
sources were exhausted. Sir Joshua is of opinion that 
he owed not less than two thousand pounds. Was ever 
poet so trusted before ?" 

But if the greatest grief at, the sudden and premature 
death of Goldsmith would seem to have been shown at 
the moment by certain wretched creatures who were 
found weeping on the stairs leading to his chambers, it 
must not be supposed that his fine friends either forgot 
him, or ceased to regard his memory with a great gen- 
tleness and kindness. Some two years after, when a 
monument was about to be erected to Goldsmith in 
Westminster Abbey, Johnson consented to write " the 
poor dear Doctor's epitaph ;" and so anxious were the 
members of that famous circle in which Goldsmith had 
figured, that a just tribute should be paid to his genius, 
that they even ventured to send a round-robin to the 
great Cham desiring him to amend his first draft. Now, 
perhaps, we have less interest in Johnson's estimate of 
Goldsmith's genius — though it contains the famous 
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit — than in the phrases 
which tell of the honor paid to the memory of the dead 



150 GOLDSMITH. [chap. 

poet by the love of his companions and the faithfulness 
of his friends. It may here be added that the precise 
spot where Goldsmith was buried in the Temple church- 
yard is unknown. So lived and so died Oliver Gold- 
smith. 



In the foregoing pages the writings of Goldsmith have 
been given so prominent a place in the history of his life 
that it is unnecessary to take them here collectively and 
endeavor to sum up their distinctive qualities. As much 
as could be said within the limited space has, it is hoped, 
been said about their genuine and tender pathos, that 
never at any time verges on the affected or theatrical ; 
about their quaint, delicate, delightful humor j about that 
broader humor that is not afraid to provoke the whole- 
some laughter of mankind by dealing with common and 
familiar ways, and manners and men ; about that choice- 
ness of diction, that lightness and grace of touch, that 
lend a charm even to Goldsmith's ordinary hack-work. 

Still less necessary, perhaps, is it to review the 
facts and circumstances of Goldsmith's life, and to 
make of them an example, a warning, or an accusation. 
That has too often been done. His name has been used 
to glorify a sham Bohemianism — a Bohemianism that 
finds it easy to live in taverns, but does not find it easy, 
so far as one sees, to write poems like the Deserted Vil- 
lage. His experiences as an author have been brought 
forward to swell the cry about neglected genius — that is, 
by writers who assume their genius in order to prove the 
neglect. The misery that occasionally befell him during 
his wayward career has been fiaade the basis of au accu- 



xvii.] INCRESAING DIFFICULTIES.— THE END. 151 

sation against society, the English constitution, Chris- 
tianity — Heaven knows what. It is time to have done 
with all this nonsense. Goldsmith resorted to the hack- 
work of literature when every thing else had failed him ; 
and he was fairly paid for it. When he did better work, 
when he " struck for honest fame/' the nation gave him 
all the honor that he could have desired. With an as- 
sured reputation, and with ample means of subsistence, 
he obtained entrance into the most distinguished society 
then in England — he was made the friend of England's 
greatest in the arts and literature — and could have con- 
fined himself to that society excmsively if he had chosen. 
His temperament, no doubt, exposed him to suffering ; 
and the exquisite sensitiveness of a man of genius may 
demand our sympathy ; but in far greater measure is our 
sympathy demanded for the thousands upon thousands of 
people who, from illness or nervous excitability, suffer 
from quite as keen a sensitiveness without the consolation 
cf the fame that genius brings. 

In plain truth, Goldsmith himself would have been the 
last to put forward pleas humiliating alike to himself and 
to his calling. Instead of beseeching the State to look 
after authors ; instead of imploring society to grant 
them " recognition ;" instead of saying of himself " he 
wrote, and paid the penalty ;" he would frankly have 
admitted that he chose to live his life his own way, and 
therefore paid the penalty. This is not written with any 
desire of upbraiding Goldsmith. He did choose to live 
his own life his own way, and we now have the splendid 
and beautiful results of his work ; and the world — look- 
ing at these with a constant admiration, and with a great 
and lenient love for their author — is not anxious to know 
what he did with his guineas, or whether the milkman 



152 GOLDSMITH. [chap. xvii. 

was ever paid. " He had raised money and squandered 
it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. 
But let not his frailties be remembered : he was a 
very great man." This is Johnson's wise summing 
up ; and with it we may here take leave of gentle Gold- 
smith. 



THE END, 



L A T E S T P U B L I C A T 1 N S 

FROM THE TKESS OF 

HARPEK & BROTHERS. 

SPRINGIIAVEN. A Tale of the Great War. By R. I). Blackmork. 
Profusely Illustrated by Alfred Parsons and F. Barnard, pp. viii., 
512. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. Bv Charles C. Abbott, M.D., Author 
of "Upland and Meadow." pp. xu\, 312. 12ino, Cloth, $1 80. 

THE STARTLING EXPLOITS OF DR. J. B. QUIES. From the French 
of Paul Celiere by Mrs. Cashel IIokv and Mr. John Lillie. With 
120 Illustrations, pp. xii., 328. 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. 

BALDINE, AND OTHER TALES. By Karl Erdmann Holer. Trans- 
lated from the German by the Earl of Lytton. pp. 302. ICmo, Half 
Bound, 75 cents. 

OUTLINES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. With an Account of its Ori- 
gin and Sources and of its Historical Development. By Gf.org K B. 
Davis, U.S.A., Assistant Professor of Law at the U. S. Military Aead- 

, emy. pp. xxiv., 470. 8vo, Cloth, $2 00. 

JESS. A Novel. By II. Rider Haggard, pp. iv., 340. lOmo, Cloth; 
' 75 cents. 

HAIFA; or, Life in Modern Palestine. By Laurence Qliphant. pp. 375. 
12mo, Cloth, $1 75. 

FROM FORECASTLE TO CABIN. By Captain S. Samuels. Willi Por- 
trait and Illustrations, pp. xviii., 308. 12 mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

MICROSCOPY FOR BEGINNERS; or, Common Objects from the Ponds 
and Ditches. By Alfred C. Stokes, M.D. Illustrated, pp. xiv., 308. 
12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

THE FRENCH PRINCIPIA. PART III. An Introduction to French 
Prose Composition. . On the Plan of Dr. William Smith's " Principia 
Latina." pp. xvi., 370. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

MEDIAEVAL ART. By Dr. Franz von Reber. Translated by Joseph 
TnACHER Clarke. Handsomely Illustrated, pp. 770. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00. 

FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY, (latest Issues.) 

CTSj 

Knight-Errant. A Novel. By Edna Lyall 20 

Charles Reade. A Memoir compiled chiefly from his Literary Re- 
mains. By Charles L. Reade and the Rev. Compton Reade. . . . 25 

Sabina Zembra. A Novel. By William Black: 20 

The Bride of the Nile. A Romance. By Georg Ebers. Trans- 
lated by Clara Bell 25 

♦y Harpkr & Brothers will send any of the above works by mail, postage pre* 
paid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 



HARPE R'S PERIO DICALS. 

HARPER'S MAGAZINE, One Year ...... $4 00 

HARPER'S WEEKLY, One Year 4 00 

HARPER'S BAZAR, One Year 4 00 

HARPERS YOUNG PEOPLE, One Year .... 2 00 
HARPER'S FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY, 

One Year, 52 Numbers 10 00 

The Volumes of the Weekly and Bazar begin with the first Numbers 
for January, the Volumes of the Young People with the first Number 
for November, and the Volumes of the Magazime with the Numbers for 
June and December of each year. 

Subscriptions will be commenced with the Number of each Periodical 
current at the time of receipt of order, except in cases where the sub- 
scriber otherwise directs. 



BOUND VOLUMES. 

Bound Volumes of the Magazine for three years back, each Volume 
containing the Numbers for Six Months, will be sent by mail, postage 
prepaid, on receipt of $3 00 per Volume in Cloth, or $5 25 in Half Calf. 

Bound Volumes of the Weekly or Bazar for three years back, each con- 
taining the Numbers for a year, will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, on 
receipt of $7 00 per Volume in Cloth, or $10 50 in Half Morocco. 

Harper's Young People for 1883, 1884, and 1885, handsomely bound 
in Illuminated Cloth, will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, on receipt of 
$3 50 per Volume. 

t3T The Bound Volumes of Hakpku's Yocng Vt.ovi.k for 18S0, 1881, 1SS2, and 1886 
are out of stock, and will not be reprinted. 



ADVERTISING. 

The extent and character of the circulation of Harper's Magazine, 
Harper's Weiskly, Harper's Bazar, and Harper's Young People 
render them advantageous mediums for advertising. A limited number 
of suitable advertisements will be inserted at the following rates:— In the 
Magazine, Fourth Cover Page, $1500 00 ; Third Cover Page, or First 
Page of advertisement sheet, $500 00 ; one-half of such page when whole 
page is not taken, $300 00 ; one-quarter of such page when whole page is 
not taken, $150 00; an Inside Page of advertisement sheet, $250 00; one- 
half of such page, $150 00; one -quarter of such page, $75 00; smaller 
cards on an inside page, per line, $2 00: in the Weekly, Outside Page, 
$2 00 a line ; Inside Pages, $1 50 a line : in the Bazar, $1 00 a line : in the 
Young People, Cover Pages, 50 cents a line. Average : eight. words to a 
line, twelve lines to an iuch. Cuts and display charged the same rates for 
space occupied as solid matter. Remittances should be made by Post 
Office Money Order or Draft, to avoid chance of loss. 



Address; HARPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square, New York. 



1 



IbK 



tt 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 154 404 4 # 



■B 



i! 



H 



